


All the shit I took

by Darke_Eco_Freak



Series: Everything we shared [1]
Category: Jak and Daxter
Genre: Companion Piece, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-25
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-04-23 06:47:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 23,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4867100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darke_Eco_Freak/pseuds/Darke_Eco_Freak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It started with paper books, things that were easy to steal and replace without anyone noticing. Then it moved onto glances, lingering gazes on a man that could never be his. And then they'd won the war and life never looked better. And then he'd been exiled and everything was more confusing than before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Somehow the rain started this

**Author's Note:**

> Best read alongside All the shit you left me. They are sister pieces and told from the pov of the respective halves of Jak/Torn. Both will be updated alongside each other so nothing to fear there.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was the rain, it forced them to take shelter in the hideout. It was the books, they forced the pair to start reading.

The Underground's hideout was about as inconspicuous as a three legged tigorilla tap dancing but it was the only safe dry place around and currently their only choice. The rain in Haven was so much colder than SandOver where it was a welcome relief, here it just seemed as though the sky itself hated you. It was pouring hard and heavy in torrential sheets of water, the drops pelting down and stinging like miniature whumpbee pricks.

"We don't hafta go to the hide out," Daxter mumbled, always leaving it to him, giving him the choice because he knew how long his friend had gone without one. Jak appreciated it more than he could ever say but it was stupid sometimes, especially now when he could feel the full body spasms that passed for Ottsel shivers. Dax had never done well with cold, even as a human, and it was only pig headed determination that'd gotten him up Snowy Mountain.

"They have a fire and you're wiped," he grunted, ducking into a doorway as another guard marched pass. He still had no idea how much they knew about him, what he looked like, if Praxis knew about Dax, and he wasn't risking it just yet. Besides, it wasn't as though they had anywhere else to go, they'd spent the two weeks sleeping out of the wind in people's doorways or rooftops, in the broken sections of road. But everywhere was flooded and damp now, they really didn't have any other choice unless they both wanted one mother of a flu.

They waited another minute for all patrols to clear out of the roundabout before ducking into the dead end alley, always throwing cautious glances behind as they waited for the door to recognise them. Jak hadn't figured it out yet, either it relied on facial recognition which meant a camera somewhere close by or worked with a scanner. Neither seemed plausible, they hadn't been given a pass of any kind nor did he ever hear the tell-tale hum of nearby machinery .

He stopped a second in the stairway to shake off, no need to get the place wet and maybe have Torn kick them out. The man was strange, all badass show boating and snark when they'd first met to some hardass, stoic commander in hours flat. In prison, there'd been other inmates, ones who would spend the entire day laughing, laughing, laughing, and as soon as the lights went out, they'd start screaming or crying. Maybe Torn was like them, some of them had even had tattoos like him, so maybe that's what they meant; insanity.

Thankfully, the man was nowhere to be found when they made their way down into the hidden room but the fire was still lit and the boxes of rations were there only the red head was gone. Somehow Jak had gotten the idea of the man standing behind the desk, peering down at maps and pieces of intel stuck in his head and to see the picture incomplete was weird. Still though, no one to yell at them or send them back into the rain and he had been told he could come here whenever he needed.

"Hey look at these," Daxter called, dragging out a beat up box from behind some ration crates. He half expected alcohol, more to match the whole shelf of the stuff on the wall but was surprised to see books, actual paper books. Most of them were missing their covers, some even growing mildew and all were dog-eared but the words were still visible and good enough.

"Guess even an anti-government group needs something to entertain themselves with," he muttered, picking a book at random and flipping through the pages. He and Dax had asked around about books before, usually asking the bums huddled around garbage fires, and found out that thousands of paper books had been burnt when Praxis took power. Everything that wasn't paper stock was stored in libraries on data pads that you could borrow but only with your government issued id card. And the books that could be borrowed were all about Praxis grand rise to glory, his magnificent assaults on the Metal Head Nest and his tragic loss of Dead Town, basically everything was government propaganda.

"Oooh, this one looks good," Daxter announced, pulling out one of the few books with a cover and scampering back up onto his shoulder. The cover was black and white and grey with one splotch of red throwing off the whole monochromatic scheme, most of the cover was there but the title was still missing, water damage. Dax cleared his throat loudly and the blond rolled his eyes at his friend but didn't protest as the ottsel started reading.

"The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not." The words were a little shaky, Dax never had been the best oral reader despite how much he talked but he  ** _could_**  and it was enough to throw in the faces of people who thought he couldn't. Besides, it wasn't as though Jak was about to start reading aloud, even if it was just Daxter, he didn't want to risk stumbling over any of his words and having Erol's reminders of ' _stupid_ ' ' _worthless_ ' ' _mute freak_ ' start echoing around his head again. He snatched up a few ration bars instead, enough for the both of them, and climbed up to one of the top bunks, settling in as comfortably as possible to weather the storm.


	2. Why do I...want you?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while since Jak got called in by the Underground, too busy getting in tight with Krew but he's still a member and still has to pull his weight. And if a trip to the hideout can get them a new book (let him see Torn) then at least they got something out of it.

Somehow he'd lost the first scarf Daxter had gotten for him, not that it was all that important or one of a kind. Just one day he'd had it to hide his face in and the next he didn't, Daxter had gotten another one for him though, snuck into a guard warehouse and came back out with it. Apparently they didn't even miss the damn thing which kinda pissed him off, here the city was suffering while Praxis didn't give a shit beyond the care and upkeep of his obedient army.

The ever burning embers of hatred only ever flared up when Jak had some time to think about it these days, between exploring outside this Precursors' forsaken city and running errands for his new boss. The pumping station was bigger than he'd thought, from the first run around impression he'd gotten of it at least, and the sewer systems were obviously adapted from escape tunnels. There was no possible way those things were meant solely for waste, especially since he hadn't seen much waste down there anyway. A lot of the water had drained off, down different tunnels that he couldn't quite figure out and all sorts of creatures were mucking around down, he highly doubted all of them were crawling in from the ocean when Lurker sharks still existed.

More like they were hunting along the tunnels, scavenging along the security wall, digging under weak spots and dropping into the sewers. Or they could be waltzing in through the access hatches which had to exist in as big a sewer system as this and getting eco from the guards. Yeah, when two and two made tipsy flutterbies dance the conga, then shit was up.

"Hey, so long as we're visiting Tattooed Wonder, we might as well swap out the book," Dax suggested because they'd gotten the full use out of the other one. It wasn't as though they had all the time in the world for reading, always Daxter reading to Jak, but they'd managed to finish the whole thing in between cleaning out sewers and bagging trophies. It had been surprisingly good for a book about a magic circus, not exactly unexpected but it sure as hell had some plot twists in there. He could understand why the Baron would burn all books if even a quarter of them were like that one. Couldn't risk giving the populace hope, fictional or not, now could he?

Also couldn't let them think anything but heterosexuality was allowed. Homosexuality was a cult, pansexuals worshiped the Dark Makers, bi's deserved nothing less than death and asexuals, along with transexuals, were just a bad pipe dream. Better to fill their heads with all this straight media in the hopes people would be too fucking scared to come out as anything but. The longer he spent in this damn city, the more he found to hate about it's laws and society, but mostly Praxis. Wasn't it enough to have these people literally caged in like livestock? He had to put up walls in their minds too?

"Just make sure he doesn't see you," he warned because ration bars were one thing but paper books could get you thrown in prison. Plus, Jak was pretty sure there were quite a few underground resources that he and Daxter weren't privy too, the books could be one of them and he didn't want to lose that just yet. And the way to not loose this on stolen and hoarded privilege was to avoid the hideout as much as possible and only duck in for books when no one was around.

But he couldn't help the...need? Need was as good a word as any, right, so he couldn't help the need to hang around Torn like some sad croc pup, it was annoying but somehow Jak found himself able to relax around Torn. Really unwind the way he'd only ever been able to do around Daxter in this new, crazy world. The feeling, the need, unsettled him and made him want to stay as far away from the man as he could while simultaneously made him want to spend as much time as he could in the cramped, hole in the wall room.

When they got down into the room, the red head didn't look happy, not that he ever did but more so this time. Jak could already tell he was going to send them on some break back mission that probably only the two of them could accomplish without back up. When he heard it was about one of theirs at the Baron's mining operations, he almost wanted to say 'called it' but kept his mouth shut. He watched closely as Daxter riled the man up and then deliberately fell off the table, when he looked down to check on him Jak could just see the box being shoved back into place.

They were out as quickly as they had come and managed to flip through the thin, coverless book Daxter had managed to grab. There were some pages missing but it didn't look as though they were important to the story, which was actually a play and had some nice pictures. Some people had wings, others didn't, some people were as small as his hand and one even had an animal's head at a point. He vaguely wondered whether or not Torn had noticed it missing, whether or not he'd even cared. He wanted Torn to care, for some weird as fuck reason he wanted the hard ass to care.

"We'll read it after we finish up here," Jak promised, slamming on the breaks just outside the building, some people screamed as they sent the zoomer back down the walk way. The thing hit a guard and they ducked into the building, off to save whoever else had thrown their sorry lot with the Underground.


	3. If I could have even half of what she did

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jak's not jealous, he isn't. He's just a good reader of body language, and a good interpreter of mood. Torn's mad so he's flippant, Torn's tense so he's loose. Torn's possessive so he...isn't jealous

"So it means the whole thing was a fake out?" Jak muttered as they hid beneath a bridge. Apparently being Krew's money collectors was more dangerous than he'd thought. Eco ore was a lot more valuable here than it was back home and guards were always on the lookout for it. They'd had to punch out a man on the last pick up because he got too close and though they'd managed to outrun the alert, the guards were still suspicious of any blond around.

"Uh, not really, it's more like adding to atmosphere. The whole thing was about fairies and dreams so the last guy talking to the audience was just to include the people in the dream vibe they had going. Also, if the play sucked, at least you could think it was a really bad dream," Dax murmured, his entire body wound around the blond's neck in not so obvious distress. All the running around, narrowly escaping capture and death was sometimes too much for his friend but Jak couldn't slow down, not for anything. He could feel time running out like an itch under his skin, either Praxis was gonna make his move or the Metal Heads were making theirs, or he was going to lose himself before either side made up their damn minds.

"What a shit disclaimer," he commented idly, their last book hadn't been all that bad for a play. The weird form of language had given them some trouble at first but then they found a glossary of terms at the back and things went well from there. Jak still thought Daxter understood it better though; he was good at picking up undertones, usually in someone's voice, so he was good at this interpreting stuff.

Of course, when he'd figured out how to visit the city's famed forest and realised that the place had matched the play's setting to a near tee, it had added greatly to their appreciation of the book. The entire play, except for the beginning and end, had taken place in a whimsical forest where fairies and magic ruled. Haven forest had just about measured up to that with its open water and flowers and butterflies and actual trees, never mind it taking a dick and a half to get there. It had added something to the play and it was a damn pretty place.

There was also the fact Haven's forest reminded them of the jungle back home, it was the only thing they'd found that reminded them of SandOver and they tried to visit as often as they could. Jak gave no fucks that he had to scale the rocks of the pumping station to get here, or that he had to calculate his descent to the letter to avoid falling onto hard, unforgiving ground rather than slightly softer water. It was all worth it to have some small piece of home.

"Eh, wonder what the slave driver's got for us today," Dax groused as Jak heaved them out of the ditch, it was always a risk diving into those things. They were muddy and hard to manoeuvre in, one day a guard could wise up and jump in after them or just start shooting through the slats of the bridge, it wasn't like ditches had the best cover in close combat. Jak intended on never letting that happen though and sprinted for the mouth of the alley, always better to get in and out as quickly as possible.

"Probably needs something blown up," he suggested waiting the customary five seconds for the door to slide open. He caught the scent of smoke before anything, sharp and heavy in the air, well there was  _something_  interesting going on at least. The last time he'd smelt something interesting around here it'd been alcohol when they first met Torn and the man had reeked worse than the Hip Hog at happy hour. Apparently it had even been common knowledge among the Underground that their visible head drank himself into shitfaced stupors though a lot of people had no idea what'd made him stop. Dax had joined the betting pool, fifty orbs on the tattooed bastard finding someone worth the effort of staying sober.

The conversation that followed was…different. Clearly whoever this KG woman was, Torn cared about her, he cared a lot. The man was on edge, shouting at them and even threatening Daxter though Jak had to be honest in saying his friend deserved it even if that was just how Dax was, he diffused tension with humour. Between glaring and ordering them about, the red head kept glancing down at a map, he'd traced various routes through the pumping station though they all ended up at the same place. They hadn't visited that place yet, a higher outcropping than the one he'd scale to get to the forest but accessible all the same.

And the tenser Torn became, the more relaxed and laid back Jak got. He couldn't find it in himself to care much over whoever'd gotten stranded out in the pumping station, spy of theirs or not, because he got to see Torn not stoic for once. The flush under the blue of the tattoos was weird, a sort of pink blush, like lightly burnt skin that contrasted kinda nicely with the fading blue ink.

There was also some mix of hopelessness, desperation and anger bubbling away in his blue eyes that reminded Jak of Daxter, oddly enough. It reminded him of how it used to be back in SandOver, when Samos would refuse to listen to something the red head had to say, or the villagers treated him like a good for nothing, when only Jak could get him to smile or play or joke around. The juxtaposition was so strong he almost reached out to touch, to smooth the worry lines between the red head's eyes the same way he would do Daxter. And because he couldn't do that, his body followed other motions, had him cocking one hip, had him resting an arm on the table and breathing deep and slow.

Daxter was a creature of mimicry, if someone acted angry, if they threw shit and shouted themselves hoarse, he would snark them half to death and back. Torn, on the other hand, was a creature of consistency, when he started he didn't stop and it just kept building until he worked off his back wash of emotion or he exploded. Looked like they were getting a flare up this time.

But then Torn tried to warn Jak off the KG woman, as though he had absolutely no control over himself and would go after anything with a vagina and  _Jak_  got pissed off. More than he should have been and the frustration flooded back into his body, straightened his posture and forced him back into his defensive stance. He didn't let it show, he would never let himself be that transparent, but when he snatched Daxter from the table it was rougher than necessary. Even if the antics were just a cover to swipe a couple rations and a few of the cigarettes that were lying around, Jak wouldn't admit his anger was directed anything other than that. Torn already made him more confused than he wanted to admit and he was not fucking jealous.


	4. There's something keeping me from being good enough...not anymore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The old house in the ruins, Torn's 'Sacred Site', it's nothing they could've ever expected. So forgive him for being a little pissed, for losing his fucking temper.

“Jak, come on calm down!” Daxter hissed, his blunt claws digging into the exposed skin of his neck, somehow managing to draw blood. The tiny pinpricks of pain weren’t anywhere near enough to keep him down, they flared for a few brief seconds but the eco was close to the surface and mended the tears before they could faze him. The guard that had tried to take them in was bleeding out, his hands clutching weakly at his throat but it was already too late.

The man had charged them, recognised his face from the wanted posters maybe, and tried to get in close to stun him. At that point Jak hadn’t given a fuck about electrocution, he’d grabbed the weapon and used it to drag the man in close, close enough to see his snarl of predator’s teeth. The man hadn’t gotten the chance to scream, to even breathe, as he brought his free hand up and carved out a nice chunk of flesh with claws better suited to some apex predator than a human.

He'd nearly take off his own tongue as he bit down on a howl of rage, Jak'd snatched the communicator off the man’s belt and thrown it against the far wall, the same place he’d flung the bloody hunk of meat. The faint crunch of machinery had been enough to tell them that more guards wouldn’t have the chance to come running. Although he might've preferred that option, it’d feel good to take out this anger on something more than cardboard targets and concrete walls. 

“I know yer mad about the whole… _thing_ but you can’t go all nasty here!” Dax growled, grabbing hold of one ear and yanking it hard. They were in another dead end alley, not their dead end alley, this one was close to the arena and Keira and a home that was more lost than he’d ever dreamt.

“Let’s just get back to ole Captain Laryngitis and you can get some sleep,” the ottsel suggested, nearly begging, keeping the tight grip on his ear and winding another paw in his hair. Somehow they made it back to the Hideout like that, with Daxter hissing instructions in his ear and jerking him in whatever direction when he didn’t listen. He leapt off at the mouth of the alley, their alley, and let the zoomer glide back out, no need for suspicious townies to get in his way.

_‘There is a monster among you, masquerading as a man.’_

Once, he and Daxter had stopped and listened to the transmissions from those machines, trying to get an idea of the new world they’d found themselves in. Some of messages were about him, the renegade, the escapee, the monster, and sometimes Jak swore he could still hear those transmissions, over and over and over again. It never mattered how far away they were from one, he only had to think about it, think about the man and the words would start up in his head, chasing themselves around his head until they lost meaning. 

The words would start up just like the boiling, simmering hatred, it was like having lightning in his blood, sparking along his veins and making him want to move, to hunt and destroy. He was on his knees before he knew what was going on, before he noticed the very real lightning or felt the heat creeping over him. His mouth filled up with too many teeth, too sharp teeth and he slowly became aware of Daxter whisper shouting in his ears but it was hard to focus on the words over the throbbing pain at his temples.

He’d heard about the horns, from the rumours floating around and the official reports that guards sometimes discussed. He knew that they were a shiny black and came to point, he was pretty sure he could maul something with them though he’d never tried and that made him even more furious. So he ignored Daxter, just for the second, and reached up with fingers that felt too long to clutch at bone that was colder than ice.

He’d broken bones before, of course he had, in prison, running from the KG and on whatever impossible mission his _employers_ sent him on, blocking a blow to the head, receiving a kick to the ribs. The pain always came after the sound, a hollow, snap that never sounded as though it should have anything to do with the human body. It was like an iced over tree branch, he’d broken frozen branches up on snowy mountain and every time  something inside him snapped, he couldn’t help but remember that. Only instead of being so cold it burned, breaking bones was lightning hot, so hot it froze his blood. 

The pain this time was far worse than anything he’d ever experienced before; he was breaking a bone that shouldn’t exist and it fucking **_hurt_**. The searing, aching, throbbing agony wasn’t enough to stop him though, never, he wanted to prove he wasn’t some mindless beast and these horns were ruining the illusion. He wanted to be good enough for the home he’d lost and fuck everything that was keeping him from doing that. This time the snap wasn’t clean or sharp, this time the bone splintered from continuous force as opposed to a quick date with gravity.

He could feel the ragged edges gauging into his palms, slicing deep into the muscle and soaking his hair as it slid down his wrists. Daxter was actually screaming in his ears now, not giving half a fuck for whoever might hear him, and he could hear his friend, could acknowledge his existence again because the horns were gone.

“What the fuck is wrong in that twisted head of yours?!” Daxter yelled but Jak never felt better. He was good enough for SandOver, he could **_pretend_** to be good enough, because he’d broken off the damn horns and looked as normal as he was ever going to get.

“Let’s go see our fucking forest and read our damn book,” he grunted, letting the broken, useless pieces of bone fall from his hands and sprinting back out of the alley. Never mind that they should report in and demand to see this ‘Shadow’ person, or that the book in question was about a man who’d experimented on himself and now had a malevolent alter ego. No, he could care less about any of that, Jak and Daxter were going to the fucking forest to eat some fucking stolen food and no fucking thing was going to stop them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Jak, maybe you shouldn't leave your broken bones lying around? Never know who could find them ya know.


	5. Let it go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Baron's got the Precursor Stone and who the fuck ever sold them out is going to fucking pay.

He wasn’t angry, _he wasn’t_ , because anger was hot, so hot it scorched his insides and burnt them all to a crisp, anger heightened his senses and dulled his conscience, anger made him murderous. So no, Jak wasn’t angry because he wasn’t melting with the heat of his bloodlust, instead he was freezing, just a walking block of ice. Or maybe walking _in_ a block of ice? Everything was so distant, kinda far away. 

He saw his hands steering the vehicle, heard Daxter as he rattled off the reports that were coming in all across the city but was completely detached from it all.

_The Underground has been neutralised._

_The Shadow and his associates are in guard custody and the rogue child heir has, unfortunately, been lost in the brave raid conducted by Commander Errol._

_New Amber Guard units have been dispatched for your safety._

Jak could see and hear everything going on around him but he couldn’t feel anything, it was like he was wearing a skin tight suit so close-fitting it made his breaths short and head pound but shut everything else out. The Underground had fallen, the kid was most likely dead and the Shadow was captured, everything was falling to pieces around him. Praxis had the Precursor stone and was going to blow them all to kingdom come, what was the fucking point of even going back to hideout anymore?!

What was the fucking point of fighting when they’d already lost as thoroughly as they could?

_Revenge_ a nasty little voice whispered, a voice that he refused to call his conscience or the devil on his shoulder because that would be acknowledging it. He was _not_ about to acknowledge the voices in his head, he wasn’t. He was already way too fucked up, he didn’t need to assign sources to the voices and random thoughts floating through his head, especially the ones he didn’t want to claim.

The voice was right though, he’d never committed to the Underground because he’d never needed the Underground; he had enough of his own contacts to take down Praxis but. But he had committed to certain people, like Tess and the kid and...Torn so maybe he owed it to them to fight for their cause. Maybe he owed it to them to take this fucking city apart brick by brick because of the spy who’d leaked all their information to Praxis.

He sure as hell owed it to the Kid, the little boy who’d never asked to be dragged into this horror, who was only important because of who his father was. He was just a little kid and for some reason everyone in this damn city expected him to save them, bullshit. And he possibly owed it to Torn, maybe the ex-Kg hadn’t been warm but then Jak knew he was a little shit, _monster_ , and didn’t deserve the amount of kindness he’d gotten. He owed it to them, he did, he... _did_. 

“Jak, you okay buddy? You look kinda…weird,” and he could tell from Daxter’s voice that weird wasn’t the word he wanted to use but it was the closest he could find. And Jak knew what Dax was talking about because he felt…weird, still so disconnected from everything that had happened, even with his new conviction.

He still felt so cold and disoriented, as though all the rules had changed while he was in the Tomb, as though the world’s axis had tilted and everyone but him had adjusted to it. And, and, and he knew why, why he felt this way. He was the **hero** , the one who was fighting on the side of truth and justice and the rights of the people, the one who never lost. Even after Praxis had bred a monster into his blood, he was still the hero, darker, older, more broken, but still the hero.

Even in the books they’d stolen from Torn, the Hero always won. The giants were defeated and the evil sorcerers were killed or locked away but always punished for their actions. The princess was saved and the poor oppressed people were freed, the evil curses were broken and everything turned out alright in the end with some nice little moral to tie it all together.

The hero didn’t lose, his friends didn’t get taken away, possibly killed, while the villain got the magical, mystical item and essentially won the game. Back in SandOver, in the past, when he’d set out on his quest to save Daxter and then the world, he’d never lost. He’d found every power cell, he’d beaten every lurker and saved all the Sages, he’d stopped Gol and Maia, **_he’d won_**.

Jak had never moved past that. He had never lost then, not once, so why should he now? He’d murdered men in cold blood and blown up buildings for fuck’s sake and he was still the hero here, somehow, so he’d never had to consider losing. He was playing by SandOver’s rules when he shouldn’t have been playing by any. And no rules meant...

“I know who the spy is Dax…and he’s going to help us get our friends back,” he muttered, taking their last turn far sharper than he should and leaping from the zoomer just before it exploded. He was still cold, cold with his realization that fucking Torn was the spy, why did it have to fucking be **_Torn_** , and that there were no rules for him anymore. He could take whatever he wanted, do whatever, be whoever and it wouldn’t matter one shit here because heroes didn’t always win. Sometimes the hero wasn’t even the fucking hero, sometimes they were the villain and sometimes the villain had the better intentions and **_he_** won.

And Jak was learning that cold was just as bad as hot. Hot made him lose control, made him nothing more than a deadly, dangerous animal ready to rip apart anything in his way. Cold on the other hand, cold kept him damningly rational, made him think about everything and nothing and made him plan. He knew how to get the information he wanted from Torn, he knew how to get what he wanted, and he knew just how he wanted to kill all the fuckers that got in his god damn way.

“Who? Jak? Jak, you’ve got that look on yer face that means bad stuff’s gonna happen,” Daxter whined, tugging at his hair and digging his claws into the blond’s neck, just like the last time he’d lost control. This time though, he was completely _in control_ , he knew what he wanted, how to get it and fuck that god damn prison for keeping it from him.

“Think we could get away with snatching another gun upgrade?” he mused, ready to tear out the world’s throat and spit it back in its face. 


	6. Drink yer sorrows away friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hip Hog Heaven Saloon is a great place to get a cheap drink and sell valuable information. Nice little hole in the wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just for the record, I wrote this piece before I started watching Mr. Robot so this is completely coincidental.

The blond renegade almost wished he could bash his brains out on a wall but he didn’t have enough time or a hard enough wall handy. Between working for Krew, who had him on escort detail, and the Underground who thought he was some kind of one man army, he and Dax were being run ragged.

Shit was heating up, which he understood as good as the next guy, but that didn’t give any of them any excuse to treat him like the experiments the Baron had done on him had given him an unlimited supply of sustainable energy. He could barely drag himself into the Hip Hog without wanting to throw up from how little sleep he’d gotten in the last week. And that was _without_ taking into account the thousands of little cuts, bruises, blaster burns and fractured/broken bones that his body was drawing on already depleted eco reserves to heal. Not to mention the little sleep he’d managed to get had been snatched between missions, curled up in zoomers or underneath awnings while, a precious few minutes of mindless numbness before nightmares or 

He’s been running around doing errands for Krew and winning races and working for the Underground and generally trying not to die from the increased guard presence. The only reason he and Dax were even **_in_** the Hip Hog was because of a tip off from Jinx, the pyromaniac that suggested they squirrel out some info on Krew’s latest project. The man insisted it was some serious shit and had to do with that thing they’d stolen from the statue and that as the one to get them down there, Jak had a right to know what was going on. Well that and Jinx’s nearly non-existent conscience was probably bothering him, thinking about pulling one over on the pretty boy.

“Gimme whatever the fuck is strongest in this fucking shithole,” he grunted, resting his cheek on the sticky bar, and ignoring all the nasty little pictures his mind conjured up for _why_ it was sticky. All the bartenders knew him by now, he was Krew’s ‘worker’, anything he wanted he was given, no questions asked.

“Hundred percent wastelander vodka, guaranteed to make ya puke ya guts out,” the man, Elliot or something, declared, sliding over a tall glass of opaque vodka. He snorted into the table but sat up to drink the stuff before Daxter decided it was a good idea to play around with liquid liver failure. The last time Daxter’d gotten drunk, it was off the lighter stuff that were kept under the bar proper, usually just the drinks that went into cocktails, but they’d been enough to get the Ottsel drunk in minutes flat. He didn’t want to see what something with a higher proof could do to him.

“If you say so,” he muttered, knocking back all of it in one and motioning for a refill. The stuff had no taste and no effect although he was almost sure the slight twinge in his lower abdomen was his liver continually being replenished by eco. As the night wore on, and the horrified look on the barkeeper’s face melted into religious reverence, more guards and criminals filtered through the bar than there were in Praxis’ obnoxious prison.

More than half of them were out of towners, people from rival drug lords who were there to do business with Krew. In just two hours, Jak learned about every drug dealer in Kras, Haven and several wasteland cities, every type of drug on the market and how much it went for. He knew who was going to win the Kras Championship this year, it was rigged, and who had the hottest weapons for sale.

In fact, anyone with enough orbs, or eco ore or eco crystals, could get in on a nice piece of the action. They just needed to know the right people, who to piss off, who to screw over and how to take a bullet, other than that though, anyone could make a sweet living off the black market. Jak was half tempted to carve out a slice for himself, get in good with a few more bosses, see what he could scrounge up about Praxis and what had happened to SandOver.

However, despite the various criminal transactions he’d overheard, there’d been nothing about what Krew was planning and how it involved him. In all actuality, most of the people in the bar had avoided mentioning Krew’s name, or glossed over any of his dealings with Praxis. Jak wasn’t stupid, he knew Krew was dealing with the Baron as easily as he was dealing with the Underground, it only made sense. The only reason his association with Praxis was kept on the down low was because of the city council, or as he liked to think of them, a bouquet of dicks.

They’d facilitated Praxis’ rise to power all those years ago and were the real people running this city. They were all from old, wealthy families, all with a huge amount of their money tied in with the city, its eco mines, its pumping station, its raw and manufactured exports. They’d needed a strong leader, a real face that the city could rally around, a man who could save Haven and their investments. So now that they had Praxis, after aiding him in overthrowing the real heir to the throne, they weren’t about to let any of his less than legal activities come to light.

“Well look who the crocadog dragged in,” their blonde spy giggled, replacing Elliot seamlessly and topping off his glass with something red and white. He raised an eyebrow at her but knocked back the stuff all the same, it tasted like mint and strawberry, nice.

“Our fire crazy friend suggested I swing by,” he muttered, snorting when Daxter, who’d been asleep around his neck, perked up and stretched. Jak knew that for all his posturing and flirting with every pretty face that walked by, Dax was actually head over tail infatuated with the blonde woman. He had no idea how they’d work out but whatever, if they got together he’d support them one hundred percent. Daxter deserved some happiness, and maybe he’d be able to get it if they were still alive at the end of all this nonsense.

“Jinxy? Hmm, he did mention you might stop by. Told me I should tell you about some old watery doors, how they needed a _key_ to open,” Tess mused, a finger pressed to her lips as though she had no idea why that might be important. Jak couldn’t help but appreciate how well she played the ditzy blonde when she was anything but. He had no problem seeing this woman being Torn’s right hand, or taking over the world in a blaze of fire and pink glitter.

“Who gives a shit about old doors?” he sneered, pulling out a couple notes and tossing them in her tip jar. And if there was a little note in there for her from Vin in there too then whoops, he was so fucking clumsy sometimes.

“Eh, Jinxy’s weird like that. Nice to see you boys, specially you Daxie,” she cooed, leaning over the bar to kiss Daxter’s furry cheek.

“Krew’s working on something big. Be ready,” she whispered, voice harder and all the teasing giggles gone. He nodded slightly, just enough for her to feel before she pulled away, smiling coyly at them, oh yeah she was damn good at this job.

“See ya round Tessie,” he called as he shoved his way through late night crowd, not giving one shit for all the eyes that followed him. He was tired, not drunk and more than ready to kick all of their asses if they had a problem.

“We’ve still got half those reports to read through, wanna kick it in the stadium?” Daxter asked referring to the stolen reports they’d lifted from Torn’s desk at the Hideout. The little Ottsel shifted, wrapping himself more securely around the blond’s neck as they got out into the street proper. In the Hip Hog there were rules of a sort, ‘I don’t fuck with you, you don’t fuck with me’, guards could do whatever the shit illegal business they wanted and didn’t arrest known criminals. Out here though, it was a free for all, and it was just plain embarrassing to be taken in by the same man you’d just sold twelve pounds of dope to.

“Yeah, and I’ve still got a few mangerines left,” he answered, jumping the first zoomer that came their way.  


	7. We're alive?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> War is hell but all wars must end and when you've already been through hell, there's not much more the world can throw at you.

 A centuries’ old war and he’d ended it in mere hours, what the ever loving fuck? He and Daxter had fought their way through the near impenetrable Metal Head nest, killing everything they could and ducking out of sight of what they couldn’t. He'd ducked behind walls and used them as cover while Daxter scouted out the way from whatever vantage point he could find, whatever little piece of height he could find. There were Metal Heads in the Nest that neither of them had ever seen before, things that leapt around like they had springs in them, trying to stab him with those unnaturally sharp claws of theirs. There were spiders, fucking spiders of all things that would drop down and spit acidic dark eco at him, those were harder to get rid of since he could never tell where the next one was coming from. 

The whole area surrounding the Nest had been desolate, empty and foreboding. There'd been broken buildings, the remnants of KG tanks and more than a few bones scattered around. The sky had been overcast the way it always was around active Dark Eco deposits, the same way it'd been around Misty Island and Jak hadn't been able to help but wonder if the Nest  ** _was_ ** Misty Island. There'd been a general air of depression and death hanging heavy on his shoulders, there'd been a charge in the air, one that had been cut the second he'd turned on the Gun, laughing the way he knew sounded unhinged but not able to give much of a fuck over it. They'd blown open the Nest and they'd torn away the tension clinging so tight to them, as close as a second skin and twice as suffocating. 

The Nest had been a living, breathing thing, literally and Daxter's fur had stood on edge. Kor had tried to murder him with dark eco, multiple times, but for all that it burned like a mother fucker and made him want to throw up his organs, it couldn’t kill him. The Dark Eco hadn't been able to kill him, he'd absorbed it over and over again, taking in stride or stumbling and having to scramble to avoid the scorpions trying to stab him. He'd fought and he'd dodged and ducked with Daxter screaming in his ear about which direction to take or where he'd spotted some spare ammo. There'd been a lot of loose ammo clips in the Nest and Jak never wanted to think about why that was. 

Praxis had been right, Jak was his greatest weapon, and the bastard had done one hell of a job on him. Armed with nothing more than a morph gun, himself and his best friend, he’d taken on the most dangerous thing they’d ever come across and walked away with nothing more than a few superficial wounds. Although Daxter was quick to point out that seven broken ribs, bruised tibias, minor (it was major a few hours ago) internal bleeding, and a concussion that had him seeing spots weren’t anywhere near superficial but their opinions differed. Daxter was safe, a little dizzy, a little pissed and bruised but he was safe, and Jak was able to walk out of there on his own so it was an incredible win all around. 

An incredible victory that he was somehow uncomfortable celebrating. He knew how many people had been lost to buy him and Dax the time to get to the Nest, how much the City had sacrificed for them to have a ghost of a chance. The Precursor had told him that the dark eco was balanced with a 'Glorious Light' and fuck if he knew that meant but he still felt as though this City owed him more than it'd given him. That he had no right to celebrate the same thing they were, even though the victory had been his, even though the men who'd done this to him, who'd **_tortured_ ** him for two years, were both dead and rotting away. 

So here he was, hanging back in the shadows while Daxter prattled on about something to Torn, with a handful of eco quartz beads. He’d worked hard to collect one of each type, blue had been the most abundant seeing as there’d been an active blue eco vent in the mountain temple but he had six. Blue, green, yellow, red, dark and he thought the last one was white but he couldn’t be sure, he’d only seen the rare eco that one time. He wasn't even sure white eco could exist naturally, but whatever this white stone was, it wasn't just quartz.

He watched as his friend chatted with the new Commander of the Guard, managing a small smile from the man, before he made up his mind.

“Hey Dax, Tess wants your opinion on something in the back,” he stated bluntly, not giving a shit about subtly or discretion. And Daxter, showing that he didn't give a shit, hung around for a couple minutes more before disappearing, possibly off to gossip with Tess over them like the brat he was. Or possibly off to get that back rub that Tess had promised her _little Hero_.

Jak hesitated for a second, just a second of doubt before sliding into the booth next to Torn. He swallowed hard as he moved closer, closer to this man than they'd ever been before, so close that their legs brushed. He could feel the heat of Torn's leg through his pants, could feel the pulse of blood even through the rough denim because he was still riding that deadly eco-adrenaline high and everything was sharp and clear and all at once. He heard the shallower breaths, the way Torn tried to lean away and closer at the same time and was just a little bit comforted by how awkward Torn seemed too. Nice to know that even though the Ex-KG had more than ten years on him, Jak wasn't the only one out of his depth here.

“You want to talk?”

So, one by one, he brought out the beads he’d made and explained their properties to the man, making sure he knew what he and Dax used to do with them. Jak knew he was doing this in a hell of a convoluted and roundabout way, asking the man to be with him using eco quartz and a vague allusion to the past but he wasn’t the best with words. Fuck, he’d only been speaking for a few months now so excuse him for his awkwardness.

He played with the beads, threw them up and caught them as they came down, and left it entirely up to Torn. The blond didn’t want to make the man think he owed him anything, just because he’d won them the war or because he’d made the underground movement worth something. He wanted this, Precursors knew how much he wanted this, but he only wanted this if the other man did, otherwise he’d fuck right off.

“Well I still have the one you forgot in the Hip Hog, Tess asked me to give it back,” the man murmured, taking out a much smaller blue eco quartz piece and pushed it across to Jak’s side of the table. He stared at it, stared at it hard then looked at Torn, searching for any kind of signal, any sort of reluctance in his eyes. Jak didn’t find anything other than complete acceptance and  a willingness to try.

“You can have all of them, if you want,” he said, letting all the beads clatter onto the table and waited for the red head to make his move. There was a second where he second guessed himself, thought maybe he was only seeing what he wanted to see, but it was quickly killed by the soft chuckle. If Jak’s hearing was normal, he was certain he’d never have heard the quiet noise but he did and he saw the genuine smile on the man’s face.

“I’ll keep them for you until you find a place for them,” he explained, grinning wide enough to split his face and gathering up the beads again. They spent the rest of the night with their friends and each other, celebrating the first taste of peace in too many years. He knocked back shot after shot, laughed at Daxter’s rendition of their fight with Kor and relaxed against Torn the way he couldn't with anyone else. 

When the last of the fireworks died down and most of their friends were passed out drunk on tables and in the booths, they left together. Fingers tangled together, eyes half lidded and smiles soft, that was when it actually sunk in that he had this, this complex, intelligent, beautifully scarred man. When he realised that Torn, the Commander of the Guard, ex-KG Captain and leader of the Underground, the spy and traitor and fighter was his. That Torn had chosen to be his and that they actually might have something close to a future together.

Coincidentally it also when he remembered the bedrooms Ashelin had given them in the palace.


	8. Sometimes I want to be wrong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Expect the worst and be pleasantly surprised when you're wrong, that was a saying right? Something people said when things were going to shit and hope was a thing that'd flown away. Yeah, maybe it'd be a better saying if Jak was usually never wrong about the things he knew.

Somehow it was easy and hard being with Torn. The man was an insane workaholic, he was stubborn and always ready to shout down an entire roomful of people to get his way. He had hang ups over his tattoos, a lot of ex-KG did, more than half of them had only joined to put food on the table or get family members out of prison after all. Torn still struggled with his alcoholism and nicotine addiction but he was getting better, he was working on it. He fought with Daxter all the time and spent more time with Ashelin than Jak sometimes but Jak knew which one of them the man _loved_.

“What the _fuck_ are you doing?” Torn half shouted, half groaned which really meant he was almost impressed but nowhere near willing to admit it since it would only make him want to do better. Eh, Jak would take it.

“Did you know I can still climb up here using those support beams? I thought Ashelin upped the security,” he called as he shimmied down a support column. Jak hadn’t been able to sleep, Daxter was off renovating the bar and Torn had been working his ass numb so Jak’d decided to test Ashelin’s new ‘security measures’. He’d used the same b-zone powerlift Vin had rerouted for him all those months ago and other than getting rid of some pipes and introducing a new turbo canon, nothing had really changed.

He could still get into the Palace throne room from the roof and had spent half the night travelling from support tower to support tower and back. The shock tiles were less electrifying, the buzz had worn off and the stinging, numbing pain had faded to a vague static shock which was nearly worrying. So when his favourite red head had finally decided to come out of his cave to stretch his legs in the throne room, Jak thought he’d drop in for a chat.

“She did, only your acrobatic, pain immune ass can get up there now,” Torn grumbled, collapsing onto the empty throne. They all took turns fucking around with the thing these days, taking pictures and sending it to the paparazzi, pretending to be bored of all the peasants. Dicking around on a velvet upholstered throne had turned out to be far more therapeutic than any of them would’ve ever thought but everyone took advantage of it.

“A couple more turbo canons aren’t gonna stop anyone Torn, just line the whole thing with electroshocks and you’ll be in business,” he said, plopping himself down at the red head’s feet and leaning back against the man’s legs.

For once it wasn’t raining or overcast and the throne room’s glass ceiling opened up to the star ridden night sky. The moon was a thin crescent at the very edge of the glass, barely visible, but it was better like this, nothing more than the tiny pinpricks of light in the almost black. It was...peaceful, this high up most of the city’s light pollution was a vague blur on the horizon and he could almost pretend he was back home.

Or maybe he shouldn’t do that. Maybe he should keep himself as grounded to the present as he could so he reached up and stole one hand away. Jak laced their fingers together and rested their joined hands on his shoulder where he could press the back of Torn’s hand to his cheek. Here was something he’d never had in SandOver, something that was good and serene in its own right and couldn’t be stolen away by a past he tried so hard to make his peace with. 

“And what if some crazy fucker takes down eco grid? For an hour at least?” Torn asked, letting the other hand drop to his hair. The man liked to run his fingers through the dirty blond, tugging on the strands just hard enough to be nice, and they both got something out of it. The FLG commander liked being able to do something with his hands and Jak liked having his hair played with.

“That’s why you get rid of random platforms along the beam. There’s no reason to have those, other than giving someone a free ride to throne room,” he mumbled, blinking slowly up at the ceiling. Honestly, he wasn’t sure why he was griping about the support towers, Torn was right, he was the only one that knew how to get up here using them and he was the only one crazy enough to attempt it. Still, it was better to complain about the security of the palace than the fuckery of the council.

Better to pretend his biggest problem was how easy it was to use their stronghold as a playground than how apathetic he’d grown towards this entire clusterfuck. The city was going to kill him or banish him, okay, so nothing had changed since he’d broken out of prison nearly a year ago. But he’d thought, just for a few seconds there that things **_had_** changed. He’d thought that he could make this new, crazy, future his home, that he could live here and have a life here. Then reality shit all over that hope and reminded him his life was crap.

“Mmm, they’re for maintenance but I’ll let Ashelin know. So is _that_ why you’ve been up here? Running around testing our defences?” Torn said, fingers moving from his hair to his neck, tracing the vulnerable veins and delicate bones there. There were precious few people Jak let get this close, he could count all of them on one hand; Daxter, Torn, Keira and Ashelin.

“Couldn’t sleep, I started thinking about...everything,” the last word lost in a long, rattling sigh. He was so fucking tired, exhausted, fatigued and all the other fancy words Ashelin insisted he use in public. Physically he was fine, well relatively, he had energy to burn which was part of the damn problem, but mentally he was wrecked. Between the press and the council and the eco withdrawal, he was somewhere between dying and dead.

“We’ll figure this out, the council’s just a bunch of assholes with too much power,” Torn promised, stroking his jaw, trying to rub away the tension. Jak swallowed hard, trying his best to relax into the familiar embrace and ignore the dissatisfactory bitch of a situation. The council wanted him gone, dead preferably, and most of the city was on their side due to the media coverage.

According to them he was fucked out, cracked up freak; everyone was convinced that not only was he some abomination, a dark eco creature, he was also a strung out druggie. Their proof? He wore long sleeves all the time, he was apathetic, he spoke like it was a chore, he was hostile, his pupils were always blown, not to mention the hallucinations and delusions. All of which added up to one mother of a purple heart addiction and yet another reason to hate him.

Never mind all those ‘symptoms’ of his could just as easily be attributed to the dark eco that literally **_lived_** in his bloodstream, or quite a few mental disorders. But the nail in the coffin had probably been when they found out about his frequent visits to the Oracle in the Slums, found out how he spoke to it and ranted and raved and answered it like it had asked him something. How the fuck was he supposed to know no one else ever heard the damned thing?

“Ashelin would never let them kick you out, **_I’d_** never let them take you,” Torn swore, voice hard, much gruffer than he’d heard in weeks. And that was when Jak knew things weren’t going to be okay. That exact moment was the one he’d look back to in the coming months and identify as the one where he lost hope.

And it wasn’t that he didn’t trust Torn, he trusted the man with his life, had done it hundreds of times before, but there was only so much he could do to protect Haven’s devil. Jak was a dead man either way, he’d get executed or exiled and there wasn’t a fucking thing Torn could do to stop it. He could probably be there up to the minute Jak was sentenced but Jak wouldn’t let him continue a second longer.

How’d he know though? Easy really, Torn only spoke like that, used that tone of voice when shit was hopeless but he couldn’t find it in himself to say it out loud. Other notable instances of ‘the voice’ had been when he’d stormed Dead Town to protect the ‘Sacred Site’, when he’d left to get their people out of prison, when he’d left for the nest and to go home. Each and every time Torn hadn’t wanted to admit just how fucking scared he was that his ‘demolition dummy’ wouldn’t return.

“I know,” he whispered, leaning into the touch he knew he’d be losing all too soon. And when he turned out to be right not a month later, with nothing more than a string of beads pressed against his ankle, hidden away in a boot, and a beacon signalling Precursors’ knew who, he wasn’t angry, or sad, or bitter. He was just right.


	9. But what about your?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you don't even know why you're helping, only that you are and you're the hero but you're also the outcast. Life is complicated and the Gods better be laughing.

“Jak, your friends need you _I_ need you.” Ashelin murmured, voice tailing off and quiet. She even had the balls to look so sad and so betrayed and something in him snapped.

Who the fuck was she to come looking for him after Precursors’ forsaken **_months_** only to ask him to come back to her damn city? Where the hell did she get off? Wasn’t it enough that her father had fucked him over then she had the fucking balls to follow in the old man’s footsteps? Wasn’t it enough that he’d saved her damned City once and now they wanted him to do it _again_?

“The city threw me out, remember?” because she clearly didn’t, not if she could show up here smug as the damn mau-owl that ate the canary-frog. Here she was acting as though _her_ needing him was top priority, as if she had ever been top priority. Maybe the heat had fried her brains; it was the only explanation he could come up with for her to pretend they had something more than friendship between them if even that. She'd never once apologised for her father, never once made an attempt to apologise for what had happened to him in that fucking prison that she kept standing until an attack took it down. None of it had been her fault but he would've appreciated the sentiment. 

So now here she was asking her for help and he turned his back on her the same way she’d turned her back on him watched her fly off in her nice blue Hellcat. He watched until she was just a speck on the horizon zooming back to her precious city and all the shit inside its crumbling walls. Jak didn’t give a fuck, he didn't need the seal of Mar and he'd survive without the hover board. He had Spargus now, where no one gave a shit about his _problems_ , eco related or otherwise, and some actually liked him. He had a house, a room really, close to the water and on calm nights he could almost believe he was back in SandOver. On other nights all he had to do was look out the window to remind himself he wasn't, to remind himself that he was in Spargus and was never going back to SandOver. 

Jak had things here, he had vehicles that he could drive out into the desert when he couldn’t sleep. He had eco crystals that lit up the room when the night was too dark, or the shadows at the edge of his vision were too much. He even had a king who was willing to listen to him, to really listen when he talked because even though Damas was strict he was also fair.

Jak _liked_ Spargus, the sun was hot, the people gave no shits and he was freer here than he’d been in more years than he could count. The light eco that saturated the very earth was soothing, it eased the aches and pains he’d grown accustomed to and was generally a good place. A place he’d managed to get along fairly well in for the last three months. Three months of bartering for food and supplies, of tearing through the desert in search of long lost artefacts and **_living_**.

Three months of wondering why Torn had never once tried to contact him, sent a convoy out, or even came himself. He’d managed to convince himself that Torn _couldn’t_ leave; anti-aircraft missiles would shoot him out of the sky or the enemy had cut them off from the ships. ~~Or he was dead~~. But now Ashelin had shattered all of Jak’s sugar glass lies, had said how his _friends_ needed him and how he needed to come back to her city. 

‘ _But what about your_ -’

He’d cut her off before she could say it, before she could put a name to whatever he’d had with Torn the way neither of them had been able to. She’d just reminded him of the reality he’d run away from, even if exile wasn’t exactly his choice and he hadn’t be able to fight it. He’d forgotten about and given up on Haven as easily as they’d done him and _he_ was supposed to be a Hero? If only Seem could see him now, their ironic use of the title would never be more accurate.

Heroes were supposed to help people right? They were supposed to have the best interest of the people at heart, they were supposed to have some noble cause to fight for or someone to protect. The rules of the game were clear, the Hero always answered the call but Jak wasn’t the Hero anymore right? He’d figured it out way back when, when Torn had brought the house of cards tumbling down. Jak wasn’t a hero, he was a saviour, he was supposed to fight and fight and fight like a good little soldier no matter what and fuck everything else.

“Jak, we don’t have to go back. We’re doing great here, people **_like_** us here,” Daxter added, always quick to point out how things could be better for _Jak_. Daxter was a true friend, better than a brother; Daxter was always looking out for him, trying to make things better for Jak before himself. And in return Jak tried to do the same, even if he messed up more times than he succeeded, he still tried.

“Do _you_ want to stay here Dax? You wanna to stay here as long as we can?” he asked quietly, glancing out at the expanse of the desert. He knew the wastes surrounding Spargus were actually an island, that if he wanted to head out to the deep wastes he would need to get across the ocean somehow and keep going west. There were stories of how even after the deep wastes there was another ocean, one that never stopped and went right over the edge of the planet. What he wouldn’t give to live there on the edge of the world where no one could ever find him, could ever judge him, again.

He also knew that Haven's war wouldn't stay in Haven, as much as everyone in Spargus wanted to believe it would. Spargus wasn't old, Jak could tell that it wasn't old based on the people who lived there, there weren't any people not from Haven, there weren't even many people with dark skin. Jak knew that the only reason Spargus had been allowed to prosper as much as it had was because the bulk of the Metal Head forces had been focused on Haven for the last however man centuries. He'd give it a month or two after Haven fell for Metal Head forces to refocus on Spargus, the light eco might hold them off for a while but eventually sheer numbers would over run them. He knew that Spargus would fall after Haven did and the only question was, who did he fall with? 

“You can’t ask me that big guy, it’s not fair,” Dax muttered, hunkering down into the scarf as the wind pitched sand high into the air. There was a sandstorm coming, most definitely, but it wouldn’t hit for another couple hours at least. If he was going to get back to Haven, they’d need to start driving now otherwise they’d get caught up in it and have to bunker down for hours.

They’d need the dune hopper and some kind of boat to get back to Haven, they’d need to get past all the little islands that made up the chain leading back to the mainland. After that they’d still need something to get them past all the metal head junk and past the KG line otherwise they’d be dead. There was a reason people only flew out to the desert and no one ever tried to drive in, Krew had been doing good business ferrying people in and out the way he was.  

“You miss Tess and I never asked you to come out here with me. We can sneak back in, scope out the situation and hightail it back just like Sig used to do,” he explained though they both knew that shit wasn’t going to happen. They both knew that even if they managed to get back into the city without a transport Jak was too much of a hero, too much of the saviour to just abandon their friends, even if their friends had abandoned him. They both knew it’d take just one look at Torn and they’d be staying to fight Haven’s war for them.

“Fine, but if we get there during an attack wave I’ll never forgive you,” Daxter groused but he didn’t argue when they got back in the dune hopper. They were only five minutes into their journey when the transmission came from the monk temple and for all that they wanted to go to Haven, they still owed Spargus.

“We’ll wait out the storm in the temple,” he promised because there was no way they’d be able to get to Haven until the storm was over. Daxter grunted and held on tighter as he gunned the engine in preparation for the first stomach dropping leap.


	10. The boys are back in town

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well looks like Haven's even worse off than he remembered but that's okay, Jak's learned some new tricks.

When Jak strolled into the Naughty Ottsel and saw Torn, it was as if someone had started to slowly saw through his bones or peel the skin from his face. Jak was used to immediate pain, something he could brace for and get used to over time, he had no idea what to do with something like this. He had no idea what to do with a pain that started in his chest and pounded in his head and couldn’t be solved with some green eco.

The red head looked worse than Jak had ever seen him and that included the time he’d been forced to sell out the Underground for Ashelin’s life. There were dark bags under his eyes, eyes that looked almost black with exhaustion, and there was a whole mess of bandages over one forearm and Jak could smell the dead flesh. There was a special smell that rotting flesh had, something sweet and sickly and the green eco laced over it wasn’t helping anything, he could tell.

There was a dark bruise was just peeking over the collar of his shirt and a new scar across the bridge of his nose, another one along his jaw. All the old KG tattoos stood out against the pale, taunt skin like a brand, which they were but it’d never really hit him before. Even in the middle of the second Metal Head War, Praxis had left his mark somewhere, his legacy and wasn’t that just a kick in the teeth?  

Torn looked like shit, exhausted, dejected shit that wasn’t in any way surprised to see Jak appear out of thin fucking air.

“Jak, never thought I’d see you again,” Torn murmured as though he hadn’t been left for fucking dead in the god damn **_wasteland_**. Jak let Daxter do the talking while he chewed over the words, ripped them apart and inspected their guts, reading the entrails like a seer and searching for an answer that would satisfy him. Had Torn known he was coming? Had Ashelin told him? Was Torn just too wiped to give a fuck anymore? Had he been drinking again?

The instinctive worry was hard to fight down, the need to know that Torn was alive and maybe not healthy but that he was alive, it was nearly impossible to keep his hands to himself. Jak relied on physical actions more than verbal conversations, he didn’t understand words, words could be twisted and misheard and misunderstood in so many ways. He needed to touch, he wanted to touch so bad but he curled his fingers into fists instead and forced himself to keep away.  

“...we all are,” Torn sighed and Jak felt the compulsion to run his hands through that red hair, to just hold Torn and force him to slow down stronger than before. Jak wanted to grab Torn by the shoulders and shake the fucking apathy out of him, until he got yelled at, shouted at, cursed at. Jak wanted what they’d had during the Underground days, desperate hope and enough malice in their guts to make it through the fight with their lives.

Jak wanted to put the whole world on pause, he could actually do it too; he could use the light eco and he could do it. He wasn’t going to though, they had a war to fight and win and a daystar to deal with. Besides, Jak still didn’t know how he felt about Haven or his ‘friends’, or even Torn. 

 _He didn’t even try_ his mind reminded him over and over again, **_Ashelin_** had been the one to risk coming out to see them, to check and see if they were at least still alive. **_Ashelin_** had been the one to leave with them on that transport, to give them the beacon that had saved their damned lives. **_Ashelin_** had tried harder than Samos or Keira or even Torn to make sure he lived long enough to come back to them, maybe it was manipulation on her side but he didn’t really care.

“They’re heading this way, can you handle it Jak?” and of course, right, he was back in the city obviously he was there to help them, to fight for them. There was no chance he was here to do any kind of recon, if he was, he wouldn’t have shown his face in the Ottsel of all places. If he wasn’t ready to lay the smack down, he wouldn’t have ever let Torn see him. So he let Daxter do some more talking and didn’t say a word as they left the Ottsel again to hunt down the blast bots.

The bots were tougher than the ones Praxis had sent after the Underground all those months ago, a year, more? Upgraded with deadlier weapons and armour plating that his guns could barely scratch, didn’t matter though. He had his hands and getting in close range was a tactic the bots’d never had to deal with before, no other enemy had ever been bat shit insane. In the end, the hardest part about it was getting away from the things before the exploded.

“Woah, you sure coming back was the best idea?” Dax mumbled, steadying the gun on his shoulder and picking off a few spider mechs as Jak tore into the blast bot’s metal hide. He grunted in reply, as he shot a hole in the hull and forced his fingers deep into the wires and oil and circuitry; ripping it all apart, crushing and destroying it from the inside out. When the buzzing, nearly painful but not, electric sparks fizzed out and the mechanical spider legs started to skitter and curl up, Jak pushed away from the bot. He landed in a crouch and rolled backwards to catch his balance, then he got up and shot off in a dead sprint.

“Don’t gotta stay if you don’t want,” he answered once the inevitable ‘boom’ echoed between the buildings and the water. They had just one more bot and Jak wasn’t anywhere near calm., this one was closer to the Ottsel, closer to Torn. Jak had anger issues, he knew he did and they always stemmed from intrusive thoughts that plagued him, whispered spite until it clawed its way out of his skin in a spray of blood and rage. Sometimes literally.

This time though, this time he wasn’t mad because of Praxis or because of the Eco. This time he was mad because this fucking bots thought they could slip past him and destroy the Ottsel. This Precursors’ forsaken bot thought it could kill Torn while he stood by and didn’t do a fucking thing.

“On yer ten o’clock,” Dax muttered, flicking his ear and changing out their morph gun to the arc wielder they’d stripped off the precursor robot. The electric charged gun was easier for Dax to control, he could just prop it on Jak’s shoulder and squeeze the trigger, no aim required and little to no kick back.

Jak ducked under an extended claw and kicked out viciously, the robot collapsed at the loss of its leg and its circuits fried as the stream of electricity found it. It was easier to let his anger out on the machines, there was absolutely no remorse as he broke them, destroyed them and moved on to the next. Plus, they were all the same red as certain former KG members who he’d rather not murder so this was perfect. Not that he wanted to murder Torn but it was easier to fight and keep fighting if he imagined the man’s face on the bots.

The last blast bot was taller than the last two, a fraction tougher and perfect. Dax’s claws dug into his shoulders around the plates, tail tightening almost uncomfortably around his neck as he tensed and _leaped_ onto the bot. The extra weight was enough to make the machine stumble but not stop, they were five blocks away from the Ottsel now and the bot could take it, sort of.

Jak had never done this before, not without a full on rage induced change, but harnessing light eco was teaching him more and more about dark eco and being able to sneak away to the desert had helped too. He might not have had the Oracle pushing, whispering instructions in his head but he’d been able to **_think_** out there without needing to fight down the anger that came with it. After all that time practicing, it was easier to focus the eco and make it do what he wanted it to, which at the moment was to pool in his palm.

He stared at the purple gel coating his hand like a glove, there wasn’t any real sensation in that hand anymore, almost like the nerves were being blocked off. Jak flexed his fingers, curled them into a fist punched straight through the hull of the bot, shoving his arm through all the way to the shoulder and then, he let the eco go. He watched the purple goo eat through wires and computer chips, he watched it burn its way clear through the thick metal and onto the pavement. The eco sizzled, loud and hissing, while Jak wrapped his fingers around the core of the death bot and took it with him when he jumped free.

Not flinging the core away though, that was the work of the moment. The core was shaped like a ball and it was about the size of his fist, lots of metal sheets wrapped around each other with cables coming out. He stared at it for a few seconds, flipping it over in his hands as though he’d never seen it before and made a decision. It was a stupid decision, probably adrenaline fuelled and more work than it was worth but he twisted off one of the metal sheets before throwing the rest away.

 “When did you learn that?” Dax asked quietly as they watched from a safe distance as the bot detonated and took a few other bots with it. He opened his mouth to answer but closed it, shrugging instead. In all the years he’d channelled eco, he’d never found a way to explain the way it felt to do it. Never could find a way that didn’t leave out the taste, the feel, the very _essence_ of the eco, so he never did.

“I practice sometimes, take a vehicle out while you’re sleeping and head deeper into the desert,” he said instead, twisting the useless piece of steel in his hands, on a whim he held it tight and twisted it in half. He doubted anyone else could hear the tiny groan of metal as he untwisted it again, Dax didn’t say anything as he got out an ammo clip and used it to carve letters into the scrap.

“We should head back to HQ, see what Captain Fool’s got for us,” Dax suggested, coughing awkwardly as he got a good look at the word before Jak twisted the metal again. Neither of them mentioned it, neither of them acknowledged him leaving it in the Ottsel either. They had another mission and headed out to do it like the good little soldiers they were.


	11. Keep on, keeping on

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So intense it may as well be the Circus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for brief mental instability.

Being sent out to reopen the metal head section of the city’d been a poor strategy, a desperate strategy but desperate was all they had left. No one else could get through the sewers, no one else had the shield that Jak did and no one else could slip through enemy lines like he did. They weren’t batshit insane like him either, no one else would take the risks he and Dax did.

From the second the elevator reached ground level he’d felt it; the pulsing, living corruption filling the air. He felt as though someone had tied chains around his chest and shoved into the water, given him cement shoes and expected him to swim. It was a fight to walk in a straight line, much less avoid the scorpions; Dax took over then, sniping them from his shoulder until he got them to safe ground. Relatively safe ground at least.

 “Fucking yakkow tits,” Dax breathed, eyes wide when they saw the dark eco vaults Ashelin had told them about. There was no choice, none that didn’t end up with them blown sky high at least, Jak had to absorb the eco. Nearly three months on scarce eco hits had him almost clean, the light eco had been enough to stave off the withdrawal and there’d been more than enough of the stuff in Spargus. Every time the eco hunger started up, he’d taken a bucket of eco infused water and used rags to cover his entire body with the stuff.

He’d spent the first week in Spargus vomiting up whatever food he managed to trade for and shivering himself awake at night. Daxter had been the one to suggest using other types of eco to get him through the withdrawal period. He’d started with green eco because it was easiest to get, then they’d gone to the Monk Temple and found out about light eco. The light eco had worked better than anything else, even the morphine that the Spargan doctor had given him once but light eco was dangerous too.

When he would cover himself in the stuff, bathed in eco infused water, his skin had prickled and he’d felt numb, his muscles had knotted and cramped until he thought he was going to pass out but he never did. He knew that it was the light eco chasing out the poison in his blood and the dark eco trying to burn everything to shit on its way out. When the cramps started up, he headed out where he’d caught the Lepers with Kliever and ran laps until he was soaked with sweat. When he started to go numb, he went to the water pump and pumped water for people until his muscles burned; it hadn’t been a perfect system but it’d been better than nothing.  

Jak hadn’t felt the eco cravings in nearly three months, the longest since Praxis’d started his sick little experiments. He’d sworn he wouldn’t go back to that; he’d stay away from the eco as long as he could. Whatever he got from metal blood was fine but anything more would send him spiralling back down into full blown addiction and the withdrawal would be even worse this time. He knew his limits; he knew them very well.

“No choice, back up,” he spat, letting Daxter off before he grabbed the eco vault. The first sparks of eco had been welcome, a little shot of adrenaline to his system after so long running on empty then it got bad fast. The relief had been instantaneous, the pure eco entering his blood stream faster than any drug ever could, then the emotional backlash hit and it all went to shit.

One vault was enough to have him on edge, to give more energy than he knew what to do with and leave it buzzing under his skin. One vault was enough to have him more than buzzed, he was high as a motherfucker as a rush of endorphins flooded his system from the reintroduction of its favourite drug. Daxter had had to scream in his ear, steer him in the right direction with an ear in each paw to get him to the next vault without falling into the sludge of acid below.

Two vaults put him somewhere in the clouds, not euphoric exactly but damn near close. He’d felt as though he could touch the god damn sun, could live there without burning up or jump in the acid and not have a scratch on him. Dark eco wasn’t just a drug after all, it was a poison, it corrupted and warped the brain and he meant that literally. There was a reason people suffering from eco corrupt died screaming about monsters and shadows and ghosts coming to kill them, or died silently with their eyes open and seeing nothing. The eco destroyed their brains.

The third eco vault was like a lull in the storm, everything felt soft and far away as he used the hover board to grind along the weird purple construct. Jak could barely hear Daxter and it all felt so strange, he waved his hand in front his face and saw rainbows bouncing off his skin. He could feel the fire burning through his veins though, cold fire though.  

The dark eco from four vaults started the hallucinations, all the pleasure centres of his brain were lit up and flashing all different colours and if he had a mirror handy he’d be able to see it. He was damn sure his Uncle was walking on the acid and mumbling about its interesting properties. Was that Torn walking next to them? How’d he get the beads again? Jak could hear waves breaking on a shore, the seagulls, he was home, yes, no? Shit, he didn’t know.

“Jak! I swear to those damn Precursors,” Daxter hissed right in his ear, shoving red, yellow hair out of his eyes and scowling at him. Why was Dax mad anyway? Not like Jak’d filled his shorts with sand again…there wasn’t any sand here, was there?

“Jak! Come on, just one more and we can get back to the city,” Dax whined, tugging hard on his hair and digging into the delicate skin of his ears with little, sharp things, teeth? He grunted, tried to swat his friend away but Dax’d gotten much stronger since the last time he could remember. Daxter didn’t move, in fact, he bit _harder_.

“Remember the circus? The towering tents striped white ‘n black, no gold and red anywhere? No colour at all, ‘cept for the trees and grass of the fields,” Daxter muttered, reciting as much as he could remember of the first book they’d stolen. The entire thing was as surreal and impossible as whatever the fuck was happening to him right now. Jak _saw_ the tents, black and white and too tall to see the tops of, he could almost smell the popcorn and caramel apples from the various food carts. He was at the circus and not in this stinking, eco polluted section of hell while his fevered brain latched onto a premade hallucination. 

When they got to the last eco vault, the circus fell apart in favour of something else, something a little more real. He’d known he wasn’t going to get out of the metal head section without an explosion, and he didn’t mean gun powder and C4. He could feel the infection under his skin, could see it pumping through his veins, black and purple and blue, just waiting for a chance to break free and infect the world.

“Last one, you got this big guy,” Dax promised before scrambling for cover. They’d learned long ago that it was better for Daxter to be nowhere near when he...changed. Somehow Daxter would absorb a portion of the eco, not enough to seriously injure him but enough to give him a headache and keep him useless for a few hours. And with the amount of eco Jak had absorbed in the last hour, they had no idea what it would do to Dax if he kept close.

It was like an iron bar to the gut, had him doubling over in pain and forced all the groans and snarls he’d kept locked away through a mouth that was never built to talk. He tried to keep his jaw clenched, tried to ride the waves of pain as his bones lengthened and turned into something more animal, something that leaned towards quadruped. He couldn’t though, he couldn’t fight the pain when it’d been so long since the last time. The tang of eco infused blood washed his mouth as his jaw was forced open and fangs grew in, slicing up his gums and lips.

He expected the headache at his temples, he expected the spray of gore as horns burst out of his fucking head but it didn’t come. Instead he got the sharp pain of claws, too sharp, too long and knife-like on the tips of his fingers that carved into his forearms when he tried to make a fist. There were scars on his arms from trying to fight like a man with those things, reminders than he wasn’t just a man anymore and that animals fought differently.

The world turned colourless, turned _bright_ , and he could **_see_** the scent trails in the air. There was that sharp, unnatural scent of his poisoning the very air currents, there was the softer musk of Daxter and there was the wild, animal odour of the metal heads. The whole world was bright with smells and laced through it all was the perfume coming from the last vault of dark eco, sweet, cloying, dangerous, it dragged him in close by the hair and refused to let go.

The second his bare skin touched the vault, the eco raced to him, dived into his bloodstream and took full advantage of its new, _living_ host. He drained that vault like it was nothing, felt the crystal and metal crumbling under his fingers as he dug his claws into them. He wanted more but he couldn’t _handle_ more, he was falling, fading.  

He was _overloading_ , he couldn’t absorb anymore eco. His body was at its max **_that_** was why the horns were nowhere to be found, too much eco meant his body couldn’t break it down fast enough. If Jak didn’t get rid of the eco soon, his body was going to give out, he would literally explode. Thankfully he’d learned how to get rid of excess eco, how to call it up and use it for things more useful than ripping apart enemies in sprays of gore and guts.

Hot, cold, he had no idea what it was, relief? He didn’t give a shit anymore, so long as it went _away_. It was like holding the sun, it had no real temperature, it was nothing but raw energy he could manipulate. Wild chaos between his fingers, ready to destroy everything it touched, himself included.

He lobbed it at the thin membrane, watched it consume and destroy from the ground up. The eco didn’t take out just the membrane though, there was too much raw energy for that; the eco ate up pieces of the ground and the buildings that held up the membrane. It kept going until it hit the water of the port, hissing as it melted away into the polluted waters. Interesting. And with the excess gone Jak was able to climb back down from the high, hand over hand, he fought against the lure of the eco; to stay like this, to be powerful and strong, to be **_invincible_**.

The scents markers were still in the air, the eco heavily diluted since the source was gone and he focused on that. Focused on the heartbeats of the men hurrying forward to stop the metal heads from swarming the city, from massing an attack, and from attacking _him_.

“You need to get him out of here!”

Him? Who him? Daxter? Was Dax in danger? Fuck, and there went every attempt at subtle control. Jak stumbled forward, the drastic change in perspective catching him off guard, made him want to puke when his sight came back and his hearing dulled. It was disorienting, he couldn’t hear anything but he could see everything and the taste of blood lingered and he had to find Daxter.

“Daxter!” he rasped, coughing up a glob of blood, spitting it out and searching for the spark of orange.

“Daxter!” he yelled again, more desperate, **_shit_**! Had Dax caught the run off eco? Did a metal head attack him while Jak was dealing with shit like a fucking amateur?

“Daxter!” he shouted, ready to charge back into the poor attempt at a nest, who gave a shit that he could barely stand or that he was ready to vomit up his guts? He _needed_ to find Daxter.

“Jak! Fer fuck’s sake calm back down, I’m here, I’m fine.”

Relief had him on his knees, hitting the ground hard as the crash came. He’d never dispelled that much eco before, never just thrown it away like trash; he felt drained and beyond tired, more than exhausted, he was completely wrecked. He wouldn’t be able to do anything else _today but that was fine, he’d taken out the eco vaults and the membrane._

_‘Jak my boy, Samos here.’_

The Precursors hated him, there was no other explanation. He barely heard the rest of the comm where Samos asked him to go check some fuck or the other out in the forest. He was pretty sure there were dark eco plants in there too and the last thing he wanted was to fuck around with **_more_** dark eco. But, he’d chosen this, chosen to come back to Haven and stick around, to help them and pledge his service to them again

“Oh no, Green and bitchin’. _We’re_ taking the rest of the day off, **_you_** can go check out your stupid dark eco plants,” Daxter snapped, cutting the message off mid-com and resting a paw on his cheek. Jak huffed and would’ve rolled his eyes but it took all he had just to get back up.

“Do you need assistance, Commander?” a guard asked, holding out their hand but not touching, smart. Jak was in overload and shut down all at once, if anyone other than Daxter tried to touch him he was sure he’d kill them.

“Walk with us to the Ottsel, make sure he doesn’t pass out or somethin’,” Daxter said, holding onto the loose material of his pants and guiding him along. They’d run this route literally dozens of times, between errands for Krew and intel for the Underground and now for the FLG, but it never seemed longer. Every step threatened to send him sprawling and he was sure if he went down now, he wouldn’t be getting back up anytime soon. And through it all Daxter still talked; asking their escort questions, telling tales from the Wastes, checking on him every few seconds.

Jak hit the wall of the Ottsel and his body refused to move a step further, it recognised safe ground and that was all that mattered. His muscles were screaming at him, he was seconds away from blacking out but his instincts refused to let him until he was further inside the safe territory. There were too many sounds and smells, just too much information trying to register with his burned out brain and failing.

Voices distorted, heart beats thumped in his head louder than the rushing blood in his ears, smells overloaded his sense of direction. Pollutants in the air, corruption in the water, fuck, he could almost _feel_ the thin layer of grime coating his skin, made him want to tear at his skin until he was bloody and the dirt was gone. Jak wanted to, he what?

“We’re good, we’ll get Torn to help us. You did great, a real life saver. Now go back out there and bag me five metal heads, we’re gonna need some new trophies in here.” Was about the last thing he heard before he spaced out, his mind shutting down so his body could conserve energy.


	12. Chapter 12

“Jak, you can kill those plants with your JET-board. Just scoop up green eco energy then lay it down over the plants.”

Unlike that one time with the A-Grav, using a hover board to take out over fifty dark eco plants was hard as fuck. Not to mention the annoying little bugs that’d he’d only ever seen in the wasteland metal nest, Precursors alone knew how they’d gotten all the way to Haven.

“You told Torn about your uh eco thing?” Dax asked as they came back down after a high jump, teeth rattling in their heads as they landed. Jak grunted, grabbing onto a tree and using it to slingshot back into the open forest, choosing to refill on green eco rather than answer.

“He needed to know,” was all he said, slipping off the board and using it to crush one of the bugs, enlarging it again and heading back to the eco reservoir. They’d spent a full fifteen hours at the Ottsel, him asleep, Daxter scurrying between his passed out self and Torn’s attempts to create guard patrols for the Port based on their newly gained ground. They’d left him still working, eyes dark, mouth a thin line. Neither of them had said a word, neither of them could find anything to say.

“Right, so you ever gonna fill me in what’s going on with you two? He’s still crazy about you Jak, and you’re still in over your head for him,” Dax grumbled, grabbing tight as they hit water. Jak huffed, smiling softly as blunt claws pricked his neck, no matter how great of a swimmer Dax was, he always hated diving into anything bigger than a puddle. Jak blamed Samos and that one time he’d accidentally pushed Dax off the landing of his house into the water underneath where it was more than deep enough for Lurker Sharks. They’d gotten him out safe and sound, scared as fuck and the red head hated water ever since.

“You want us to bitch over a _relationship_ during a **_war_**?” he repeated and just saying the words made it seem even more ridiculous than it was. Whatever he and Torn had was obviously on hold until this clusterfuck was over because between Spargus and Haven and the Day Star, he and Dax had a helluva lot of responsibilities. And if Torn wanted to be an emotionless little puissant who couldn’t figure out what was so wrong with acting as though your ‘ ** _dead’_** partner coming back to you was an everyday occurrence then that wasn’t his problem.

“The rate we’re going, you two might not get another chance,” the Ottsel pointed out reasonably, which was why Jak said nothing before boosting up onto a ledge and pulling a 360. He didn’t want to talk about his and Torn’s...whatever, there were more important, less emotion intensive things to get done before they could call it a day. He also didn’t need to remember the night he’d admitted his eco addiction to the Torn.

It’d been raining, so cold and sharp it was more like hail than water, kept most people inside and lots of surviving metal heads went to ground. It’d been raining for a week straight but that hadn’t stopped him from venturing outside the walls in search of a fix, anything to tide him over until Jinx could get back into Haven. A full two weeks without his eco’d had him in edge, aggressive and quick to lash out at anyone who got too close, got too nosey. Keira’d asked what was wrong and he’d all but bitten her head off, it had taken a solid week of gifts and apologies afterwards to make it up to her.

He’d been shaking, twitching, everywhere he went he swore he could hear the Oracle, the voice of the Precursors, echoing in his head. The Oracle telling him he was destined for greatness, to be the saviour of the world who would come bathed in glorious light. The withdrawal had nearly been as bad at the overload he’d suffered not two days ago only in reverse. Instead of feeling explosive, he’d felt as though his body was cannibalizing itself, devouring fat reserves and healthy tissues when it couldn’t have dark eco. His blood melting and dissolving his very bones.

Torn had found him, in his own room, under the bed scratching at his skin until it bled, ripping at his own hair. He’d had his last resort bitten between his teeth, dark quartz beads, depleted of all their eco and left a milky white crystal clenched between his teeth, it had acted like a gag and stopped him from howling with rage and pain.

Torn had coaxed him out with soft words and subtle gestures, got him out from under the bed and kept him out with gentle but firm persuasion. The red head had gotten him out of his clothes, unbuckling and unzipping despite the full body spasms, then gotten him into an ice cold bath that overwhelmed his stretched thin senses. He’d passed out in the bath and woke up in bed with a duller ache than the one he’d passed out with, less acute but still there.

“Ashelin’s people found the left over eco from the program. They were going to dump it but this is safer for everyone involved.”

Was the gruff explanation he’d gotten for why there’d been an IV full of dark eco stuck in his arm, slowly replenishing his reserve and taking the edge off his withdrawal. After that, it’d been slightly easier to get the eco he needed and when it was scarce, Torn would always find him wherever he was holed up and stay with him. It never mattered how long he staved off the lure of the eco, he could never starve the addiction out of his blood.

Torn would hold him tight, in bed, in the ice cold baths, even make trips out to the forest or the former hideout when the world was just too small or too big. Torn had been the only thing keeping him sane while pain worse than any eco change ripped through him and somehow, this was the same man that had never tried to get him back from the desert.

Jak couldn’t understand it, Torn **_loved_** him. Fucking loved him in a ‘forever in the background, eating at your heart’ way that would never have let him stay in Haven if there was even the slightest chance Jak was alive. Ashelin had to have told him that Jak had the beacon, had a chance of possible rescue, or even after Ashelin got back from the Wastes and trying to convince him to come back. The cunt could’ve at least looked a little bit surprised, maybe happy that he was back in this Precursors’ forsaken city. No? Okay.

“Uh Jak, I just realised why these bugs’re here. They’re the first wave in metal head occupation. They burrow under the walls, start eating all the plant life so they can start producing acid pools for metal eggs,” Daxter explained quietly and his blood ran cold. The metal heads had already destroyed the arena and made sure the last of their access to Samos hut, to SandOver, was cut off and now they wanted to take the forest?

“Not a fucking chance,” he growled, leaning low as they made another pass over an eco vent, grabbing a glob of the stuff as he went. And this was less tricky than the dark eco bomb, light eco was always willing to escape, to help on the way if it could and had no problem mixing with other ecos. Sparse green eco would encourage plant growth, the more green eco available the bigger and tougher the plants would grow. Now, if he combined green eco with the light eco he’d only recently learned of, there was the chance it would promote plant growth **_and_** destroy impurities.

It was worth a try at any length and there was no chance in Hell the metal heads were going to get Haven forest too. They’d already destroyed, ripped apart, **_devoured_** SandOver, and taken away the one thing they had of home, they wouldn’t get the forbidden jungle too. Even if Jak had to hunt down every last bug and squash it himself.


	13. War is Hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jak is the saviour of Haven. He fought the Baron, he fought the Metal Heads, he fought Kor, he's fought a lot of people but he's not a soldier. He doesn't know war, he doesn't know how it can chew you up, spit you out and slit your throat all at once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for graphic depictions of gore and blood.

“Next time your ‘boyfriend’ gives us a ‘go-to guy’ job, leave me outta it!” Daxter yelled, twisting mid-air as spider mechs tried to scramble up the walls after them. Jak hung onto the top of the barricade for another second, shooting at a bot who’d made it half-way up the mish-mosh barricade. Then Daxter flung the bomb and Jak snatched him out of the air in one smooth move that sent them falling back onto the Port side of the Barricade.

The ‘ _boom!_ ’ of the explosion echoed between the concrete walls and the force of it rocked the zoomers and furniture and pieces of houses and whatever the fuck the Guard had been able to get their hands on. Bits and pieces of wood rained down on them, nothing bigger than a matchstick and most of them were on fire. There was even a second of silence after the echo of the explosion died away, or well, noise that was devoid of digitized screeching at least.

A second where Jak could hear Daxter’s ragged panting and his own skipping heartbeats then it descended back into an over stimulated hell. Jak could hear the short, sharp breaths of civilians in bunkers and he could taste the fear in the air and it was nearly as pungent as the smell of burning circuitry and roasted metal meat. He swallowed hard, trying to get the taste of old blood out of his mouth and ended up spitting instead.

They were on the secured side, _barely_ , of the Industrial barricade and Daxter’s bomb had bought them about ten seconds of peace. Thank god for those experimental plasmite charges Tess had fitted them with. The charges were a more refined version of the ones Vin had given them to close the eco vents but they were still in the development stage. The experimental bombs let them set the charge, speed up the detonation or stop it all together but the controls were touchy. Daxter had commandeered all of them and was taking advantage of his more dextrous fingers to wreak complete chaos.

Jak had been scaling the barricades for the last couple of hours, getting him and Dax behind enemy lines and putting on one hell of a distraction to draw all fire. When everything was focused on him, Dax could sneak away between the enemy's legs or underneath their guard to set off a bomb which scattered ranks and gave the Guard enough time to rally a counterattack. Then he’d race back to Jak and control the gun while Jak scrambled back over the shaking wall of scraps to the safe side. Sometimes they would stay at the top and use the vantage point to take out whatever Metal Heads or Bots they could.

It was a dangerous strategy and they both had more than a few scars and burns to prove it but it was the _best_ they had. It wasn’t like they could lead a squad over the wall into the cluster fuck of the enemy territory, it wasn’t like they could protect more than each other when they were hip deep in shit. Jak and Daxter were a two-man demolition team and they were playing to their strengths, it was as much as they could do with wave after wave of Metal Head and Krimzon Bot attacking again and again and again.

“Duck!” he shouted, bringing the morph gun around and down hard on a rogue Scorpion’s skull, hard enough to crack its skull gem and kill it instantly. Jak and Daxter had been out for five hours so far, shooting and screaming and shouting and fighting and fighting and fighting. They were bloody and bruised and at some point the sky had decided ‘why not just fucking drown this whole Precursors’ forsaken city?’. So now it was a fight between half drowning in rain and being bitten, clawed, stabbed, shot at and strangled.

Jak was thoroughly pissed.

He knew Torn had no other choice, that him and Dax were the only real chance the Guard had at withstanding the attack but that didn’t help the bubbling, _boiling_ anger. Realistically, Jak knew it was a result of all the eco hanging around, all the dark eco saturated Metal Head blood and all the dark eco replacing the coolant in the Bots, but he wasn’t in the _mood_ for logic. He wanted to tear the whole damn City apart with his bare hands, he wanted to sink his teeth into Metal Head flesh and rip out disgusting, gory chunks. He wanted to let loose on all these fuckers who thought they could take the City he’d risked his life to keep, that he’d forsaken his _home_ for but he **_couldn’t_** and that pissed him off more than anything else.

“Commander charge wall, two o’clock!” a FLG captain yelled as he ran past, his squad hot on his tail as they raced off to the other barricade at the other end of the boardwalk. Right, back to the fucking war; shaking the water out of his eyes, Jak launched Daxter onto an overhanging pipe and broke out the arc wielder. They’d basically cannibalised the wielder from the Precursor bot and it didn’t always fire at the enemy, sometimes there was some nasty leakage and kickback.

And since Jak was basically insulated against electric shocks-well the current running through his veins was stronger than this and it was more of suppression than insulation but semantics. So since he was basically insulated, it was just better for Daxter to get lost when they had to use the arc wielder which was the most effective weapon they had for the bots.

The barricade over by the Industrial Sector was worse off than the one at Mar Walk, the Bots were constantly swarming over it and out into the Port. The Guards were being run ragged between the two and Jak could only be in so many places at once but he was doing his best to run clean up. It didn’t help that every so often the Bots would break into a civilian bunker and people would be forced to evacuate before the ‘Krimzon Guard’ slaughtered them all.

“Clear!” Jak yelled, the only warning he could give the guards before he pulled the trigger.

The jolt of electricity was almost pleasant compared to the bone deep ache that had set in when the rain did or the hot pain of the cuts and bites littered across his body. The electricity went arcing through the air, trying to find a ground off in everything it touched including its source. Bots fried and guards who were too close dropped to the ground and tried to roll out of range. Jak breathed in the sparks and felt his heart trip into double time as more bots started forming a loose circle and the ammo clip ejected from the gun, empty.

This was the fifth time he’d run out of ammo so far and the fourth since the bots had started jetting over the barricades and into the water. The bots were taking advantage of their lack of aerial defence to get into the water then swam under the foot patrols on the walkways to climb up the port walls to Ottsel. Jak and Daxter had been racing between shoring up the barricades and defending the Ottsel basically single handedly while the few FLG in the Port did their best to protect what they could.

The bots exploded as the arc wielder did its work but it wasn’t enough, there were already Scorpions scuttling to fill in the broken circle and grunts running into shore up defences. Jak threw the useless ammo clip at a scorpion and broke into a dead sprint back to the barricade, snatching Daxter up as he went.

They were currently holding off a rogue arm of the Metal Head defence that was terrorizing some civilians holed up in a piss poor excuse for a bunker. They’d been forced out of a warehouse by a fire and now the streets were full of terrified, defenceless people who were trying to get back under some form of shelter. The Bots had held Jak up at the Ottsel and more civvies were out in the pouring rain by the time they’d made it back to the Mar Walk Barricade.

“Commander, ammo reload!” someone called over the cacophony of roars and electrical beeping, Jak snatched the yellow ammo out of the air and loaded it into the morph gun. Every so often a guard would run pass with some useful bit of information or eco packs or ammo, always calling him ‘Commander’ as though it was an official title or something. Well at this point he was as good as Commander, and it made things simpler than just screaming ‘eco pack!’ to the wind.

The first time a captain had done it, the woman who’d helped his half-unconscious ass to the Ottsel, he’d thought it was just part of his eco fuelled delusions. The second time, just after he’d come back in from clearing the forest, a foot patrol had asked how the Commander was doing today and he’d looked around for Torn. Daxter had been the one to explain, no it wasn’t Torn, the FLG had just unanimously promoted him to the rank of Commander, congratulations.

“Barricade breach!” a captain yelled and the rumbling sound of a dozen rickety tables creaking and shrieking heralded the swarm of bots and grunts who nearly overwhelmed them. Jak felt the familiar panic as he turned and his expected counterweight was missing. Daxter had jumped off the second they turned into the section leading to Metal Head City, and the Mar Walk Barricade, and now he causing as much chaos as possible.

Jak vaulted over a grunt and shot it from behind, always easier than taking it on from the front, and used its body as a block by shoving his back to the rapidly cooling carcass and knew he was safe from ambush for the while. Even if the body stank of blood and sweat and eco, it was still a better shelter than keeping his back to a wall. Other grunts and some of the scorpions would swarm around the carcass even if they could see Jak wedged against it. The hive mind instinct of “Leave the Dead” was too strong and they made easier pickings when he didn’t have to worry about a frontal or backwards attack.

Animal screams and roars filled the air, punching into his ears, as two plasmite bombs went off in quick succession and Daxter jumped onto his shoulder from behind, the familiar weight barely making him dip.

“They’re calling for reinforcements at the Industrial barricade,” Daxter informed him, flinging a fire-start behind their flesh wall and covering Jak’s far more sensitive ears as it went off. There was a second of scorching heat against the back of his neck then a dearth of sound as the yellow eco ate at everything it’d fallen on.

“You good here?” Jak shouted at a guard, taking aim and shooting the grunt out from on top of him. The man got to his feet quickly, made sure his gun was working, and gave them a thumbs up before diving back into the fray. Jak had to give this new FLG credit, they had more balls than the KG who’d ran when the metal heads had attacked that first time, who’d only rallied when others took up arms around them.

Jak hadn’t had the time during that first breach to help, hadn’t really cared what happened to the people back then, he’d only cared about the possibility of getting home. He hadn’t been able to fight, hadn’t been willing, but he’d heard about the Slum defence which was what Tess called it. He’d heard how the people of the slums had taken up any piece of wood or pipe they could get their hands on, even sawed up their living room tables, and taken to the streets to fight for themselves and their neighbours. Torn and Jinx had told him how the people had fallen back into these old street gangs of theirs, how warring gangs had joined together to fight for their city, it was almost sweet.

“The barricade’s coming down at the next attack,” a captain, by the stripes, explained as soon as they got to the mouth of the Industrial Sector. There were people running back and forth along the length of the structure, calling to each other and sticking their guns through the holes to shoot at the bots. The last wave of KG’s had taken out a lot of people but then they’d had a long break between that and their next spotted movement. If there was another wave after this one, Jak sincerely doubted the FLG would be able to handle it, of the three hundred or so who’d started this fight, only about a hundred were left standing and that number was quickly dwindling. Didn’t mean the people down weren’t fighting though, they were hobbling around and fighting, still fighting.

“Got it, everyone be ready to move when I tell you,” Jak ordered, climbing the barricade to get a good look at the bot formation. He’d heard the tell-tale ‘thump, thump, thump’ the second it crossed into the Industrial Sector from the Slums but he needed to see it, needed to make sure he wasn’t losing his mind again. When Daxter hissed, a sharp gasp of breath between clenched teeth, he knew and he knew how he was going to do it.

“Dax, got any more of those plasmite bombs?” he asked, voice oddly calm and level in direct contrast to the spastic, frantic tone of his thoughts. His mind hadn’t settled on a single thing since he’d gotten out into the fight, he analyzed every situation before he consciously realised; identifying threats and computing different ways to neutralise them. He had a completely different tactic for the blast bot this time, no need to break into it, no need to put anyone but himself at risk.

“Oh no, yer **_not_** doing what I think yer doing,” Daxter griped although he did dig around in the backpack for a while before handing one over. The blond took it, checking the timer options and punching in a ten-minute detonation, the rhythmic thumping getting close enough for the FLG to hear it too. They stilled for a few brief seconds, each one wearing the same expression, the ‘it was a good enough life’ expression with wide eyes, drawn brows and thin lips. They expected to die here today.

“You know me, always doing the unexpected,” he grunted, climbing back down the barricade and switching to the blaster mod, it had a laser pointer and for this next trick he’d need precision. Daxter groaned but didn’t say anything else, he knew once Jak had made up his mind, there was no way in hell he was going to unmake it.

“I want you to hold the left flank, make sure it’s nice and clear for the blast bot but let the rest overrun the right flank,” he instructed, not caring who heard just that he was. The order was relayed along the line, shouted from guard to guard, muttered to themselves but never questioning aloud, they had faith in him and he didn’t intend on breaking it again.

“ _You’re_ gonna set off the charge Dax, I’ll be busy and I don’t trust anyone else,” he muttered, listening carefully for the tell-tale clicking of spider mechs as they headed the last assault, an all-out attack in the hopes their sheer numbers would be enough to break through. Orange hackles raised as Daxter stared him dead in the eye, wondering just what the fuck was wrong he was up to this time. The Jak he knew rushed into shit, he didn’t ask people for help and he sure as hell never had a plan you could put down on paper, look at and say ‘that’s a well-thought out strategy’.

“Yeah okay, less fiery death for me,” Daxter shrugged and unwound himself from the blond’s neck, hopping onto a captain as she ran past. She nearly fell but recovered mid stumble, saluted and continued on down the line. There was only the wait, the count down on the timer and the tension in the spine of every single FLG.

They were all waiting and listening to the thumping as it got closer, and closer, and closer. No one moved a muscle as the thumping got close enough to rival the thunder cracking up above, no one said a word as the chitter of spider mechs got louder. Every eye was on Jak as he stood at the top of the barricade, the only thing between them and mechanised death.

Later Daxter would tell him how badass he looked standing against the grey sky, soaked to the bone, bleeding and scorched and perfectly still. At the moment Jak felt anything but badass as he waited for the blast bot to get in range, he was completely focussed on the timer in his hands, his finger on the trigger and the mad fuck plan in his head. He needed to get this absolutely perfect because there was no chance to fuck up.

There was a long, drawn out second as the Bot rounded the corner, skittering to get all of its legs through the tight gap and navigate the churning ocean of spider mechs. The timer hit forty-five seconds and the bot was twenty feet away, thirty seconds and fifteen feet, twenty seconds and twelve feet, ten seconds and eight feet, five seconds and the automatic targeting system had locked on him.

Jak flung himself over the bot, getting behind it, and threw the bomb as hard as he could. It left his hand at three seconds.  

The bot fired at the barricade, right where his head had been, and Jak brought his gun up at the arch of his jump. He pulled the trigger as he started to fall and as the bomb made contact with the bot’s steel hull. Then he hit the ground, hard, all the breath punched out of his lungs but it didn’t matter because the force of the bomb going off had pitched the bot into the barricade and his shot had hit the sweet spot just underneath the head that stopped the automatic self-destruct.

Then the barricade was exploding and sent the world into loud, burning, breaking chaos. The force was enough to squeeze any remaining air from his chest, enough to make him feel as though his bones had been liquefied, like his organs had been mashed to pulp. Jak couldn’t breathe and he couldn’t think and there was nothing but the deafness in his ears and the pain _everywhere_.

Even reeling from the pain and shock though, even when he couldn’t _think_ , Jak still had enough presence of mind to protect himself from more pain. He brought his hands up just in time to protect his face from the scorching metal raining down and curled onto his side before anything could pierce his chest.

Slowly, painfully slow, things starting creeping back into his awareness. The smell of warped metal and burning circuitry and used up ammo and rancid eco, enough smells and scents to make his head spin. Or that could be the definite concussion.

Then Jak could hear the muffled voices of people shouting, men and women and someone he really should recognise but fuck, everything was too much. They kept shouting and as his hearing cleared up, painfully, he could make out his own name, then he heard Daxter’s voice high pitched and tense with worry.

“Jak! C’mon buddy, you’re okay, you’re good. Gimme a eco pack right fucking now!”

And because everything didn’t hurt enough, Jak had to push himself into a sitting position. His back complained and his arms threatened to give out under him and his stomach was ready to protest any second. He wanted to throw up but it would hurt too much, he wanted to lie back down but it would hurt too much, everything hurt too much. Fuck, he was never going to lead an assault mission ever a-fucking-gain.

Everything around him was a frenzy of movement, the FLG scurrying around doing whatever it was they were doing, the fire burning everywhere, the rain falling around them. Everything was happening all at once and he felt slow, dumb and out of the loop. Fuck.

“What?! _Another_ one?”

“How? We have every access point covered and it couldn’t come through the Metal Head Section.”

“Precursors, we can’t fight it, we don’t have enough people."

“We **_have_** to; we can’t let it get to HQ.”

Jak didn’t think, he never did and Daxter would give him hell for it later but right now he had to keep fighting. He couldn’t let one little explosion throw him off; Torn had given him a mission and he was going to fucking complete it, concussion, broken bones and all.

“Jak what the hell!” Daxter shouted when he realised what Jak planned to do. The morph gun felt like a ten tonne boulder in his hand, just as heavy and unwieldy but it was his only weapon, the only one he could use right now. And his feet felt like blocks of concrete strapped to his legs, too heavy to move but fuck if he wasn’t moving anyway.

“Jak where the hell do you think you’re going? You can’t fight this thing now!” Daxter yelled, keeping pace with him easy. One foot in front of the other was the way to do it, don’t stop, don’t think about how he was going to take out the second Blast Bot, don’t think about the empty ammo clips and not having any more plasmite charges.

The FLG couldn’t take the Blast Bot, some of them had been too close to the Barricade when it went, some of them were already too hurt. They didn’t have the manpower to take out a Bot, they didn’t have the weapons to take out a Bot and too many people had died already. Jak was the only one who could do it, he was the only one who could take a Blast Bot head on.

“I’m gonna strangle Torn next time I seem him. ‘ _You’re my go-to guy Ja_ k’, we always get the crappy missions,” Daxter muttered, keeping up a steady stream of complaints and threats as Jak started sprinting. He stumbled and he nearly fell flat on his face but he didn’t, Daxter hopped on his shoulder and he nearly pitched but he didn’t.  

Jak was moving slow but Blast Bots were always slower, they shook the ground when they moved but they were too big and too cumbersome. They were demolition bots; they were heavy hitters but they took a while to react and that was the only opening he needed.

“Blast Bot dead ahead, bombs away,” Daxter said as they finally caught up to the bot, skidding to a stop. The Bot stank of stagnant water and acid, this one had come through the sewers, they hadn’t been worried about the sewers.

“Dax, I’ll distract it then you can use the Vulcan fury on it.”

Neither of them pointed out the obvious flaw in the plan, about how Jak was barely steady on his feet and how there was no way in hell Daxter was going to get off his shoulder right now. Because that was what Jak had in mind, play the distraction, draw the fire so Daxter could wail away at the thing. They had a job to do and they needed to do it now.

Daxter took the gun and the last ammo pack they had left, Jak ran at the closest leg. Even hurt like this Jak was still stronger than any man, he was stronger than most mid-sized Metal Heads. He’d always been strong, since his SandOver days he’d been unusually strong, but now with dark eco in his veins and light eco under his skin, he was inhumanly strong. When he hit the Blast Bot, it shook and tried to keep moving forward but Jak had too tight a grip on its leg.

He couldn’t hold this thing indefinitely because even he wasn’t that strong but he _could_ hold it back. This was different from his usual distraction, from his preferred distraction of running around and attacking and being the world’s biggest annoyance but he couldn’t do that right now. He knew he wouldn’t be able to keep out of the bot’s tracking system and wouldn’t be able to dodge the laser blasts.

Grabbing a leg and holding on was the only way to avoid being shot at. He was too close for the targeting system to get a lock and he was too close for the other legs to hit him. He was also clear of the Vulcan when Daxter started unloading the clip in the Bot. Shot after rapid fire shot had the bot jerking around almost hard enough to get out of Jak’s grip, almost.

…they were actually doing it. The Bot was too focussed on being shot for the targeting system to lock onto Daxter and it couldn’t move forward with Jak holding it back. Just a little more and Dax would pierce the hull and get at all the delicate wires, then it would start the automatic detonation and they’d run like hell before it blew.

…they weren’t doing it. Of course the Vulcan clip ran dry before the hull broke. Of course it was their last one, they were fighters but they weren’t soldiers. Jak had never fought any kind of lengthy battles, he didn’t know how to prepare for one, he didn’t know, _he didn’t know_ , _he didn’t know_.

Daxter scrambled to change out the Vulcan to the Blaster, a few more hits were all they needed. A few fucking more! He got off one shot before the bot locked on and Daxter could move, he was fast, he was small, he would move. Jak held on and waited, and waited, and waited.

Daxter kept firing while the Bot got ready to shoot. Daxter started moving too slow, trying to take the gun with him, and Jak reacted automatically.

“Dax!” he shouted, letting go of the Blast Bot’s leg and jumping at the same second. Nausea and pain and confusion all at once but fuck all of that, Daxter was still too close and the Bot was firing. Neither of them could take a hit from that, not now, so Jak did the only thing he could. He snatched at the eco under his skin and the eco snapped to attention, the shield was up before he hit the ground and it covered Daxter which was all that mattered.

The shots bounced off the shield and rebounded at the bot, at least one must’ve hit where Daxter was beating away at the hull before because the bot rocked backwards. Jak didn’t know, all he knew was that Daxter was here, in his arms, and the shield kept them safe as the bot exploded. The noise hadn’t even died before the shield dropped because fuck, keeping that thing up was harder than keeping a dark transformation in check.  

Later Daxter would tell him about how when the shield fell it wasn’t all that different from when he went dark. Daxter would tell him about his eyes, how instead of black and animalistic they went white and alien and ‘ _Oh no big guy, I mean completely white. No pupils, no iris, just white_.’

Then how he’d blinked and it was like two different people had been there, one had walked away and another one had just shown up. Daxter would tell him how it was nearly worse than when he went nasty because the devil you know right?

But right then, right as the shield fell and he felt more tired than he’d felt in his entire life, he didn’t care about any of that because, because.

"You did it Jak, you stopped the assault!" Torn's voice on the comm was rough and wrung out and broke but fuck was it good to hear, "You did it."

"We did it Dax," he whispered, swallowing hard. 

"Yeah big guy, we did it. Drinks are on me." 


	14. Remember your betters

He’d slept for fifteen hours again and was stiff by the time he woke up the next day. He woke up in one of the bedrooms above the bar, where Dax used to sleep most nights back when the Ottsel was open every day and not in the middle of a war. He woke up stiff and thirsty and hungry but alert, Jak couldn’t remember the last time he’d had to fight his way to full consciousness. He also couldn’t decide whether that was a good thing or not, something to be thankful for or just another thing to hate.

For the first time in a while though, he woke up without the run over jitters and aches and pains from an eco-hangover. Sure out in Spargus he’d been off the stuff, withdrawal was a motherfucker but he’d been able to get just enough eco to **_not_** bash his brains out against a wall. Back in prison though, back when the DWP wasn’t just him and a high-tech torture chair, he’d seen other prisoners on eco lows.

There’d been this one woman; she’d been beautiful with all this curly black hair and these deep green eyes and flawless brown skin. Jak had never learned her name but he’d been put in a cell right next to her and he’d listen to her muttering to herself, grumbling and complaining to herself for hours and hours about how she didn’t belong there, about how she needed it and they _weren’t_ **_giving_** _it_ _to her._ The woman had been a junkie, a dark eco junkie and her poison of choice had been Shade, a diluted form of dark eco mixed up with opioids and usually came in a crystal.

The woman had been snatched off the streets, arrested for vagrancy, and added to the Baron’s little science experiment. Apparently, the reasoning behind it had been that dark eco junkies had a higher tolerance to the dark eco from prolonged exposure and if their bodies were starved of the eco long enough, then the reintroduction process would take less of a toll on them. The woman had been forced into withdrawal for all of a week, a whole week, while she screamed and muttered and begged and punched the walls until the guards had to come in and tie her to the bed.

Jak had heard it all go down, and then at the end of the week, after the woman had gone quiet, the guards came for her. They’d taken her and they’d strapped her into the chair in the middle of the room, right where every prisoner could have a front row seat, and they’d started injecting eco directly into her veins. He’d been stupid then, he’d been morbidly curious about what was happening to the woman who’d been next to him for a whole week, so he’d looked.

He seriously doubted he’d ever get the image of the woman strapped to the table out of his head. The way her black hair had started to fall away in chunks where it wasn’t sizzling and frying or the scratches and sores on her arms and legs that were bleeding and burning at the same time. He would never forget how loud she screamed, high-pitched and piercing at first then it started dropping, low until it sounded like a man yelling, lower and lower until it wasn’t even human.

The woman had lasted a few hours in the chair having her body pumped full of the eco she’d been starved of for a whole week. Jak had still been at the small window when the guards took her away and he’d seen the blackened, charred and broken husk they took away. Her nails had been black, some of her teeth had fallen out, she was nearly bald and the hair she’d had left was a sickly grey-white.

Then every day for the next month, they’d strapped a junkie in the chair and killed them. Jak still didn’t understand why, there was nothing to learn there and it wasn’t like he was there for show either. Praxis had known he was special, he’d even said it the first time Jak had been strapped in himself, so scared he’d wet himself.

“Hey Jak, you hungry?” Dax asked as soon as he stuck his head in the main bar area. Jak thought for a second, he was hungry yeah but he knew that trying to eat with an eco-hangover usually ended with vomiting by a wall and regretting the waste of food. A dark eco hangover made it so his whole system had to readjust to normal things; normal stimulus, normal food, normal behaviour and capabilities. A light eco hang over though, he didn’t know how to deal with one of those and he didn’t even know if he **_had_** one.

“Ration pack and some water?” he suggested, takin a seat on one of the barstools and dropping his head in his hands. The eco withdrawal in Spargus had been hell, he’d had to fight to earn his keep and fight to earn food and he’d had to fight to keep that food down and not drown himself in the ocean. But after two weeks, he’d been better, the light eco had made it so he could keep down his food and not want to shoot himself in the face. Now though, now he was using dark eco and light eco together and they were freezing him and burning him up at the same time and he didn’t even know how dangerous one of them was.

“Here ya go pal. Torn’s been working like a mad man all day. Apparently, there’s some news about getting back together with HQ and he’s tryin to get all his people together so they don’t lose the chance,” Dax explained while Jak carefully chewed the hard jerky. After the assault on the Port it made sense, both sides of the enemy were on defence, Torn’s men had taken a serious chunk out of their fighting arm and they needed to regroup. Not to mention the barricades coming down on all their heads; the bots and the metal heads had banked on taking the Port and now they needed to replenish their numbers.

“Anything from Spargus while I was out?” he asked, washing down the taste of the gamey jerky with the maple cider Daxter had given him instead of water. Jak knew better than to ask where Dax got maple cider in the middle of a war, it was just one of those things; Jak liked maple cider and Daxter had some ready and waiting for him.

“Nah, think they’re doing okay for now but Tess said we should swing round the gun course when we can,” Dax said while Jak finished the rest of his breakfast and waited for his stomach to settle. Well at least a light eco hangover let him eat something before sending him the mother of all migraines, that was considerate.

“She’s probably got a new gun for us,” he mumbled, dipping under Daxter’s weight then righting himself instantly. Well if Tess had a gun for them, then he’d need to borrow some ear plugs because hell if he was going to fuck up because of a head ache. He was the best shot in this damn City, or well, the stubbornest shot in this damn city and he wasn’t about to lose his title.

And maybe he should upgrade that little title of his to ‘Stubbornest _Fuck_ in the Damn City’ because shooting and aiming at targets who shot back while dealing with migraine auras taking up half his damn vision was way harder than it had any right to be. Seriously, he should be given a prize or something for not dropping his gun and walking to the nearest target and **_asking_** it to shoot him.

But at least the new gun was sort of worth it; instead of having to lob plastmite bombs at enemies himself, the gun would do it for him and he could still set the detonation count down. Jak was happy with it and Daxter was happier with his sugar bear who was so smart and so skilled and could probably kick every ass from here til next year. Jak smiled while Dax sang odes of praise about Tess and yeah at least there was one good thing happening in this whole damn war. And really, listening to Dax go on and on about his girl was all the justification he needed for coming back to the City.

Even if he couldn’t make coming back for Haven’s people sound like a good idea, or a smart one, and even if he couldn’t make coming back for Torn sound like something a sane person would do, at least he could fall back on Daxter. Daxter who was his best friend in the world and who he’d do anything; if coming back to Tess made Daxter happy then fuck everything else, **_that_** was why they’d come back to the City.

Jak would fight for Haven but he would stay for Daxter. If the world was going to burn like Seem swore it would, then the least he could do was make sure his best friend got to see the woman he loved as much as possible before they all bit the big one.

Not that he planned on losing this war. Never. He had a life to take back, one that’d been stolen from him by fate and a dead man who continued to fuck them over from beyond the grave. Damn, even if Jak hated the fucker, he had to admit Praxis had left one hell of a legacy and now here was Errol back again to fight to the good fight. He could only hope that _he_ pissed off as many people after he died as Praxis did-no _more_ because he was fucking **_better_** than Praxis. He was always better than Praxis, always better than the megalomaniac who wanted to kill the world to win a war. 

"Oooh I just love new toys," Daxter sing songed because he knew Jak needed the distraction to get out of his own head sometimes. Daxter was a better friend than he de-no, Daxter was his friend. Daxter staying with him was Daxter's choice and Jak had nothing to do with that. Nobody got what they deserved in this world otherwise Praxis would've died far more painfully than a single surge of dark eco, people only got what they fought and killed for and the everything in between. Daxter had fought to get Jak back and now he had him, Jak had fought to get this City off his back and well, he was still working on that one.

"And Tessie's always got the best ones." 

Jak _deserved_ to get smacked for laughing at that though, so there was that too. 


End file.
